


Camillio Martinez, Age 20

by piratesPencil



Category: Detentionaire (Cartoon)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Canon Disabled Character, Depression, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 43,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21654607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratesPencil/pseuds/piratesPencil
Summary: Cam is twenty years old, and he’s not okay.
Relationships: Biffy T. Goldstein/Lee Ping (mentioned), Camillio "Cam" Martinez/Brandy Silver (past relationship), Camillio "Cam" Martinez/Cyrus Xavier, Camillio "Cam" Martinez/Grayson Potter, Jenny Jergens/Tina Kwee (mentioned)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

When Cam was ten years old, he was hypnotized into believing he was a monkey whenever he heard the word _butterscotch_.

When Cam was fifteen years old, he helped his best friend save the world from a massive corporate conspiracy involving ancient pyramids, lizard people and delicious soft drinks.

When Cam was twenty years old, he had a crisis.

* * *

“Your shift isn’t over yet, _cabron_! Get back in here.” Marco grabbed the back of Cam’s shirt and yanked him back into the kitchen.

“Yo, chill, _ese_ ,” Cam grumbled. He jerked himself out of his cousin’s grip and slunk over to the fryers. “Shift ends in five minutes, jesus.”

“That’s five minutes you’re supposed to be working.”

Cam didn’t say anything, and Marco went back to the front counter. How had he even noticed Cam heading out the back door when he was in the front? Seemed to be Marco’s mission to keep his hawk eyes on Cam and his iron fist tight around Cam’s neck until he couldn’t breathe anymore.

Cam hated him.

Marco was his second cousin, and they’d known each other growing up. Marco’s family had lived in Toronto for years before Cam’s mom brought him and his sister up north. But Marco was five years older, and Cam hadn’t talked to him much until he’d become Cam’s boss. Cam’s mom had thought she was doing him a favour, talking Marco into hiring him.

Marco hated Cam for it. Cam hated Marco back.

He’d needed the job, though, after he’d been fired from his third job that year. It wasn’t that Cam was a _bad_ worker, exactly. It was just hard to be motivated when every job felt like it was sucking Cam’s soul out through his fingers and his toes, and when he couldn’t see any future beyond these soul sucking jobs.

He dropped the metal basket of fries into the fryer a little too aggressively, and droplets of hot oil splattered onto his hand.

“ _Mierda!_ ” He shook his hand violently, hopping away from the fryer.

He glanced over his shoulder. Marco was showing one of the new trainees how to ring up a customer for the tenth time. The Coca Cola branded clock that hung above the front door (Cam was pretty sure it had been a Green Apple Splat clock back when MWF still owned everything in the world) said that Cam was still supposed to be working for three more minutes.

He headed out the door, making sure to slam it behind him.

* * *

“ _Marco me telefoneó,_ ” Cam’s mom said when he trudged into the house. His hand was still stinging and he smelled like grease and he wanted to sleep and shower and eat all at once.

But of course Marco had called his mom.

“Yeah?” Cam said. He opened the fridge and ducked his head inside so he wouldn’t have to look at his mom, sitting at the kitchen table tapping her red fingernails on the chipped tabletop.

“He said if you leave work early or show up late one more time, he will have to fire you.”

Cam said nothing. There was no more cold pizza in the fridge. Had Angelina eaten it all again? Dammit.

“Are you doing this on purpose, Camillio? Are you trying to be homeless? _¿Vagabundo?_ If you want to be on the streets, Camillio, I can kick you out right now—”

Cam tightened his hand around the fridge door handle, ground his teeth. “It’s not on purpose, Mom! I just—”

“Don’t shout at me!”

Cam slammed the fridge door so hard he saw it wobble. He stalked out of the kitchen, and his mom kept shouting at him.

Showering first sounded like a great idea.

* * *

“Exams are killing me,” Lee groaned. In the Skype window, Cam saw him rest his head on his arms and moan. “I have my molecular physics final _and_ my quantum mechanics final _on the same day_.”

“Sounds awful,” Cam said. He flicked a crumpled Post It note across his desk. It hit the computer screen and bounced into his lap.

Lee lifted his head. “You okay?”

Cam shrugged. “Work.”

“Marco being a jerk again?”

Cam scratched the back of his head. He’d been growing his hair out for almost two years now and it was a curly mane that stayed wet and heavy for hours after he showered. “Said he was gonna fire me if I keep leaving early.”

Lee frowned. “I don’t want to be mean, but… don’t you think you should probably _not_ leave early?”

Cam’s hands balled into fists. Then his shoulders drooped. “You don’t get it, Lee. I can’t _stand_ it there. Feels like my brain’s turning to mush! It’s so boring, _ese._ ”

Lee nodded, gave a weak smile. “Guess I don’t have that problem. I’m sorry, buddy.”

Cam shrugged. “Not like you can do anything.”

Lee gave Cam a look like he was trying to cheer him up. He seemed tired, dark circles under his eyes, but he also seemed _happy_. Lee had spent a lot of high school being less than happy, what with the ancient conspiracy that was constantly threatening to kill him and tearing his family apart. Being an exhausted university student in worn flannel with overgrown hair and piles of textbooks and empty energy drinks strewn across his desk suited Lee.

Cam was only a little bit bitter.

“Hey, you’re going to Brandy and Holger’s show Friday night, right?” Lee asked.

Cam nodded.

“Biffy and I are going, too,” Lee said. “We’ll hang out then, okay? Maybe go to the bar Jenny’s working at, she said it’s a cool place. We all need a break.”

“Uhn-kay. Sounds good. Thanks, _ese_.” Cam closed the Skype window before Lee had a chance to answer.

He flopped back on the couch and buried his face in his hands.

Cam was twenty years old, and he was pretty sure the best days of his life were already over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on this fic since 2015, so it's very near and dear to my heart... I'm planning on posting one chapter a week, and I really hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!


	2. Chapter 2

“Plot? I don’t think these artsy fartsy shows have a _plot_ ,” Biffy said.

“Okay, but this show was like an acid trip,” Lee said. “Holger was literally wearing a unicorn mask at one point, did you see that?”

“What do you know about acid trips, Mr. I-hate-the-smell-of-weed?”

“You don’t know my life,” Lee said, but he was laughing.

“I live with you, Lee.” Biffy rolled his eyes and punched Lee (gently, by Biffy standards), then draped his beefy arm around Lee’s shoulders.

Biffy wasn’t really a PDA kind of guy, but in the years he and Lee had been together, Cam had seen him go from publicly keeping a three foot distance between himself and Lee at all times to actually touching him in front of other people. Cam still wasn’t used to it. Maybe it was the university thing. Everyone experimented in university, right? Everyone loosened up.

“Let’s see if we can get backstage and see Holger and Brandy,” Lee said, looking over at Cam.

“Uhn-kay,” Cam said. He followed behind Lee and Biffy, hands shoved deep into his hoodie pockets.

It wasn’t like this was the first time he was seeing Brandy since they’d broken up. Hell, it had been over a year now, and god did time move fast. But it never really got less weird. At least Lee and Biffy were there, too. And Holger, who had the uncanny ability to be so incredibly weird that he made everything else a lot less weird.

One of the many things Cam appreciated about his weird Viking friend.

“Backstage is for the actors only,” some slow-speaking blonde guy with stretched ears said when they got to the backstage door.

“Aw, come on, we know the leads—” Cam started.

“It’s fine,” Lee interrupted. “We’ll wait for them.”

Cam looked at Lee, and the blonde guy looked at Lee, and then shrugged and closed the backstage door behind him.

Lee patted Cam on the shoulder. “I didn’t spend all of high school sneaking through air vents for nothing.”

He found a back door, and Biffy disabled the alarm, and they were backstage before Cam even knew what was going on.

“Impressive,” Cam said.

Lee grinned, and then ducked behind a rack of costumes, pulling Biffy with him.

“ _Ese_ , what—”

“Hey!”

Cam spun around. The blonde guy was glowering at him.

“How’d you get in here?”

“Uh…” Cam resisted the urge to turn and glare at the clothing rack, or to just reach into it and pull Lee out. “Someone else let us in.”

“Who?”

“Uh…” A short girl with dreads and big glasses walked past, carrying a bin of wires and mics. Cam pointed at her. “Her.”

Blonde guy whirled around. “Madeleine!” He ran after her, and Cam ducked behind the clothing rack.

“I feel betrayed,” he whined at Lee.

“You handled it fine,” Lee said, patting him on the shoulder again.

“You’re good at making up excuses, dude,” Biffy said, and patted Cam’s other shoulder, which was a lot more painful than Lee’s pats. Cam shied away from their hands.

“Let’s go find Brandy and Holger,” he said.

* * *

It was shockingly easy to find Brandy and Holger, because even surrounded by other excited and flamboyant theatre students, Brandy and Holger somehow still managed to be the two loudest people in the room.

“My _adoring_ fans are _clamouring_ for my autograph out there! I can hear them, John, don’t tell me I can’t go out there.”

“The Holgermeister must do the signing of the autographs! He has bought the most beautiful rainbow kugelschreiber for the name signing times!”

Holger was waving a fat rainbow pen above his head and Brandy had her hands planted firmly on her hips as the two of them shouted at a poor stagehand, who was seemed to be shrinking under their presence.

“But, uh, we don’t actually, _do_ signings at university productions, uh…”

“Holg! Brandy!” Lee called, and they both whipped around to look at him.

“Lee! Oh, Lee!” Holger, all six feet seven inches of him, came bounding across the room to scoop Lee up in a hug that made Cam wince out of second-hand pain.

“Hey, Holg,” Lee wheezed as Holger put him down. “How are you, buddy?”

“Holger is doing _most_ excellently,” Holger said, grinning hugely. He was wearing a glittery silver bodysuit that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, hugging the impressive curves of his unfairly muscled body. “Did Lee watch the show?”

“We did,” Lee said.

“Very artsy,” Biffy added, grinning.

Holger threw his arms around Biffy next, and while Biffy didn’t exactly reciprocate, he didn’t push Holger away, either, which was progress.

“Cam!” Holger leaped from Biffy to Cam and grabbed him in a vice grip hug, scooped him up off the ground and spun him around. “It’s me, Holger from school!”

“We haven’t gone to school together in two years, Holger,” Cam wheezed. Holger put him down, but kept his arms tight around him. “You’re so weird, yo.”

Holger laughed. Then his face fell and he tightened his arms around Cam. “Holger has missed Cam. Is Cam not liking to spend time with the Holgermeister anymore?”

“Aw man, _ese_ , it’s not like that,” Cam said quickly. “We’re all just busy, you know?”

Holger shook his head violently, and his golden locks swept across Cam’s face and into his mouth. Cam spat out hairs as Holger said, “Holger is never too busy to be spending the time with Cam.”

Cam ducked his head and smiled. “Thanks, Holg.”

“Cam hasn’t talked to me in _months_ , either, Holger. You’re not alone.”

Cam lifted his head at Brandy’s words. She was standing between Lee and Biffy, her arms looped through both of theirs. Biffy looked decidedly uncomfortable, but Lee was grinning.

“Sorry, _chiquita_ ,” Cam said.

“Still working at that backpack place in the mall?” she asked. Having apparently given up on signing autographs, she started marching Lee and Biffy towards the door that lead to the parking lot. Cam and Holger followed, Holger still draping his arms around Cam’s shoulders.

“Nah,” Cam said. “Working at the McDonald’s near A. Nigma now.”

Brandy gave him a look he couldn’t really read. Pity, or maybe she’d just given up on him.

“What’s this, your fifth job this year?” she asked.

“Fourth,” he said, and then they were outside in the dark parking lot, and he could stop looking her in the eye.


	3. Chapter 3

The bar where Jenny worked was approximately the size of a large bedroom and had the general atmosphere of a mediocre high school basement party. Other than Cam and his friends, there were about five people wandering aimlessly around the dark, smoky room.

“I hope you weren’t expecting free drinks,” Jenny said, leaning her elbows on the counter and resting her head in her hands. “’Cause I can’t do that. I’m already on probation for ‘accidentally’ punching this one dickwad in the face.” She made exaggerated air quotes around the word _accidentally_.

Biffy laughed and high-fived her. Brandy ordered a round of shots for all of them. Holger was excitedly discussing his unicorn masked performance with Lee.

Cam sat on a tall stool by the counter and kicked his smallish legs (goddamn puberty hadn’t made them much longer). He refused the shot Brandy offered him, and ordered a Coke instead. He went through the motions of dancing with Lee and Holger on the sad dance floor, but he kept ending up alone on his barstool again.

The place picked up a little as it got closer to midnight, upgrading to pretty good high school basement party. They got a smoke machine out on the dance floor and everything. Tina showed up with Chaz and Stepak. (Cam couldn’t believe they still moved in a pack, even if they were doing their journalism degree together.) She leaned over the counter to peck Jenny on the lips, then joined the rest of their friends on the dance floor, where Chaz and Holger got into something that would have been a dance battle if they were cooler.

“You okay?” Jenny asked, leaning against the bar to look at Cam.

He glanced at her. “Yeah. Tired.” Which wasn’t really a lie, but Cam said it so often these days that it felt like one.

Jenny looked him up and down. “It is my expert opinion as an actual bartender slash psychology student that you need to get laid.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Cam said.

Jenny laughed. “Seriously. Have you seen anyone since Brandy?”

“None of your business, _chiquita_ ,” Cam grumbled.

“You totally haven’t,” Jenny crowed. “Oh man, I could totally set you up with someone.”

“Don’t need your help.”

“Do, too.”

Cam stood up abruptly and slammed back the last of his Coke—which he thought would look cool, but actually resulted in him coughing in front of a laughing Jenny for a good thirty seconds.

“I’m going to play pool,” he announced, wheezing a little, and stalked away from the bar.

“Let me know when you want that matchmaking!” Jenny called after him.

An old guy wearing Converse (who reminded Cam a little too much of Lynch) and a girl wearing suspenders and dramatic black eyeshadow were engaged in what looked like some kind of intense pool tournament at the bar’s single pool table, so Cam leaned against the wall, arms crossed, and watched them for a while.

“Cam?”

Cam jumped at the sound of his name. He turned around and blinked at the sight a face he hadn’t seen in years.

“Grayson?”

“Cam?” Grayson repeated. “I… didn’t expect to see you here.”

Cam buried his hands in his pockets and shifted around on his feet a little.

“Jenny works here now, and I came with Lee and Holg and them,” Cam said. He nodded vaguely to where his friends were dominating the dance floor.

“Oh, yeah, I thought I recognized her,” Grayson said. “Wow. How’ve you been?”

“Uh.”

Grayson had left A. Nigma to go to some techie private school in grade eleven, and Cam hadn’t seen him since. They’d sort of made up after the whole blackmailing thing, or at least Cam wasn’t really mad about it anymore, but they hadn’t really become friends after, either.

Seeing Grayson, sitting in front of Cam in that futuristic wheelchair with his sleeveless shirt and his unnecessarily buff arms, was like seeing a ghost from tenth grade. He was definitely older, though, his hair swept back in a style that looked a little less like his mom had gelled it for him, and a scruffy jawline that had gotten sharp enough to cut your hand on. His voice had gotten a lot deeper, too, less nasally and almost smooth.

“I’m good,” Cam said finally. “Busy.”

“In university?” Grayson asked.

Cam tried not to wince. “Working,” he said. He left out the McDonald’s part.

“Me, too!” Grayson said excitedly.

“What, you?” Cam asked without meaning to.

“Yeah. I got picked up right out of high school to work for a computer security company as a hacker.”

“Oh.” Not McDonald’s. “ _Mucho_ cool, man.”

“I’m taking computer engineering and science classes online, too, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Where are you working?”

Cam’s hands in his pockets were fists. “My cousin’s restaurant.”

Grayson nodded.

“I’m thinking, uh, of taking some night classes next semester. History, maybe.” The words tumbled out of Cam’s mouth. He hadn’t mentioned the idea to anyone yet—hadn’t even really cemented the idea in his own mind until just now.

“I could show you the online school I’m working with. They have a strong history department,” Grayson said. He grinned up at Cam, blinding white teeth. “If you wanted.”

“Uhn-kay. _Si_. Thanks.” He kind of returned the grin.

“So, uh…” Grayson blinked hard behind his thick square glasses, scratched the back of his head. “You wanna get a drink, or…?”

“Don’t drink,” Cam said.

“Oh.” Grayson looked kind of surprised, and Cam didn’t know how to feel about that. “That’s fine. I don’t really like drinking, either. Alcohol impairs the mind, and I’m rather fond of mine.” He laughed a little, then looked down at his lap when Cam didn’t laugh. “A game of pool, then?”

The intense pool tournament had ended while they were talking.

“Sure,” Cam said.

Grayson grinned brightly again. “Wonderful.”

* * *

They were two thirds of the way into their own intense pool tournament when Lee came over.

“Whoa, Grayson! Long time no see!” Lee said. He was swaying a little tipsily and his cheeks were red.

“Concentrating,” Grayson said tersely. He was leaning over the pool table, eyeing the ball at the other end like it was a bomb he had to diffuse, or maybe his engineering homework.

Lee looked over at Cam. “We’re heading home now. The buses stop running in like twenty minutes. You coming?”

Cam glanced down at the pocket watch he now kept in his coat pocket instead of around his neck. It was almost two a.m.

“ _Mierda._ We gotta finish this game…” he said.

Grayson tapped the cue ball gently, and sank three balls, then looked up. “I have a car,” he said. “I can take you home.”

Cam grinned at Lee. “I’m going home with him. I’ll see you later, _ese_ , uhn-kay?”

Lee glanced at Grayson, then back at Cam. “You sure?”

“ _Claro_ , man. I’m almost winning. Can’t let Grayson win.”

Lee smiled and clapped Cam on the shoulder. “Okay. Have fun, dude.”

Lee waved as he walked back over to the rest of their friends, and Brandy and Holger waved at him aggressively from where they were draped drunkenly against each other’s shoulders, and Cam turned back to Grayson.

The game lasted another half hour, and Cam came _this close_ to winning.

“You’re pretty good,” Grayson said. He wheeled his chair around the pool table so he was next to Cam and looked up at him, balancing his pool cue in his lap. “Not good enough, of course, but pretty good.”

“Shut up, yo,” Cam said. “I’m great. Just haven’t played in a while.”

Grayson laughed, and Cam laughed too, and there was something nice and different about hanging out with someone new.

“Shall we head out, then?” Grayson asked. He rested his pool cue against the table and nodded towards the door.

Cam nodded. “Guess so.”

They paid their tabs at the bar, and Jenny gave them a wave and a wink as she prepared for the end of her shift.

“What’s up with her?” Cam asked, and Grayson shrugged.

* * *

Grayson’s car was small and sleek and silver, and definitely not something Cam would ever be able to afford. He ran his hands along the hood.

“Whoa…” He looked over at Grayson, who had opened the driver side door. “Didn’t know you could drive.” Then he winced, because it sounded a lot ruder out loud.

Grayson didn’t seem bothered, though. “Hand controls,” he said.

He hoisted himself out of his chair and into the seat, and Cam watched the muscles of his arms tense. His arms were so _nice_. He folded up his chair—it was definitely lighter and more portable than the chair he’d had in high school—and hauled it behind his car seat. His arms were so _strong_.

“Come on,” Grayson said, smiling and nodding at the passenger side door.

Cam slid into the seat beside Grayson. The seats were cool and smooth, black leather. The whole car smelled new.

“Yo, your car is _mucho_ cool, man,” he said.

“Thanks,” Grayson said. “Just got it.” He pulled out of the parking stall and onto the road. Cam watched him work the hand controls, ran his hands across the leather seats.

“Hacking pays well, I guess,” Cam said.

Grayson laughed. “Not bad. Saved up for this baby for ages, though.”

“Worth it,” Cam said, nodding. He still didn’t have his own car, and driving around in his mom’s beat up SUV had gotten old a long time ago.

Grayson met Cam’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He smiled. “I thought so. So, where’s home?”

Cam tapped a beat against his knee. “Kind of don’t want the night to end, you know, _ese_ ,” he said, looking out the windshield.

“I was just thinking that,” Grayson said.

Cam looked over at him. He was still smiling. “You got work tomorrow?” he asked.

Grayson nodded. “I’m enjoying tonight, though.”

The last thing Cam wanted was to go to bed and wake up and go to work. The longer the night lasted, the longer he could pretend he didn’t have to work in the morning.

“We should go somewhere,” Cam said.

“I live alone,” Grayson said. “We could go to my place.”

“Sounds good, _ese_.”

“Sounds good,” Grayson echoed.


	4. Chapter 4

Grayson lived in a one room apartment on the ground floor of an apartment building near the bar. The only two windows in the place looked out at the street and the furniture was sparse, but it was wide open and had a huge bathroom, and the sparse furniture looked sleek and modern.

Cam sat down gingerly on the very edge of the apartment’s single sofa. It was white leather and looked brand new and he was afraid just his general presence would dirty it.

“Something to drink?” Grayson asked. He’d wheeled past Cam and was looking in the fridge. “I have Perrier, orange juice and green apple soda—though you might not want anything green and carbonated after, uh…” He laughed a nervous kind of laugh. It didn’t suit him.

“Green apple soda sounds great,” Cam said. “I miss Splat.”

“Me, too,” Grayson said. He sounded relieved. “I wasn’t sure, though, you know.”

He wheeled over, two green glass bottles in his lap. He handed one to Cam and cracked his open, put it down on the sleek glass coffee table. He eased himself out of his chair and onto the couch next to Cam.

Cam guzzled half his bottle of soda, bubbles sizzling against the back of his throat, then put his down gently beside Grayson’s. He winced at the sound of glass on glass.

“What do you wanna do?” he asked. “You got any games on that thing?” He pointed at the huge flat screen TV that hung on the wall between the two windows.

“I thought we could… talk,” Grayson said. He leaned towards Cam a little. His voice had dropped an octave.

A shiver went down the backs of Cam’s thighs, behind his knees and along his forearms. A warning signal. A worry. He was in the house of someone who’d done a lot of bad shit to him a lifetime ago, a guy he didn’t _really_ know all that well, a guy who could have changed in all kinds of ways since he’d last seen him, and who hadn’t been all that trustworthy even when he did know him. And no one really knew where he was, either. Lee knew he was with Grayson, but it wasn’t like Lee knew where Grayson lived.

_He could be a murderer._

Something like almost-panic tingled in the pit of Cam’s stomach.

“Talk?”

Grayson nodded. He leaned closer to Cam, and Cam searched for a place to put his hands, a place to put his feet so he could jump up and run out of the house if he had to.

And then Cam could smell Grayson’s breath—warm, not quite minty but not bad—and why was he so close and what did he want?

And then Grayson’s hand was warm against Cam’s side, and his thumb was stroking up and down his ribs, and their foreheads were touching.

“I don’t—” Cam breathed around the impossible tightness in his throat.

Grayson pulled back a little, the warmth of his forehead coming away from Cam’s skin.

“You don’t…?”

Cam didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if he wanted to say anything.

Grayson leaned forwards again. Cam didn’t move. Grayson touched his lips to Cam’s, feather soft, like how Cam imagined a butterfly’s wings.

It made shivers run up the back of Cam’s legs and prickle along the back of his neck. He hiccupped a gasp. Grayson’s lips were so surprisingly _soft_ , and he hadn’t been kissed in so _long._

He grabbed the back of Grayson’s head. His hair was surprisingly soft, too. Cam pulled his head down, kissed him hard until their teeth clacked painfully. He felt Grayson huff against his mouth, and the warm breath made Cam’s skin stutter.

He leaned back on the smooth leather sofa, pulled Grayson on top of him. He was heavy, heavier than Cam was used to, and taller and broader, but the weight felt nice. Warm, and restraining in a way that made Cam’s whole body hot and tense. He kissed Grayson harder, bit his soft lips. Grayson gasped against his mouth again, ran his hands down Cam’s sides. He bit at Cam’s lips, too, and Cam jerked his head back involuntarily at the sharp nip.

Grayson moved his lips downward, ghosting feather kisses along Cam’s jawline and neck, making his skin crawl. He squirmed under Grayson’s weight.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, leaning his head back to expose more of his neck.

Grayson giggled against his neck, a breathy, high-pitched sound that Cam hadn’t expected from Grayson’s mouth.

A part of Cam’s mind, distant and fuzzy, wanted to know what was happening, wanted to know where this had come from. But a bigger part of Cam didn’t want to say anything to make this stop, because his whole body was buzzing and Cam felt more _real_ and alive than he had in months, doing something as surreal as making out with _Grayson_ in his futuristic apartment at three in the morning.

He’d deal with all the reasons this shouldn’t be happening when it wasn’t happening anymore.

Grayson’s hands reached the front of Cam’s pants, and heat pooled in Cam’s stomach.

“You want me to?” Grayson muttered into Cam’s collarbone.

Cam didn’t know exactly what Grayson was offering, or what he wanted Grayson to do, but he nodded vigorously, swallowing around the words in his mouth.

He was so, so starved for feeling.

* * *

Cam lost all sense of time. It felt like a lifetime. It felt like minutes. Their heavy breaths slowed as they lay tangled together on the narrow couch, Grayson’s warm body pressed up against Cam, kind of half spooning him and half lying on top of him.

He planted a soft kiss against Cam’s mouth.

“That was good,” he whispered into the corner of Cam’s mouth. “Was that good?”

Cam didn’t say anything. He lay very still, stared straight up at the white popcorn ceiling of the apartment, because now that this thing wasn’t happening anymore, he had to think about what had just happened.

“Are you okay?” Grayson asked, lifting his head a little.

“I didn’t know you were gay,” Cam said to the ceiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Grayson grin.

“I didn’t know you were, either,” he said.

Cam blinked. “I’m not.”

“Sorry. Bi?” Grayson asked.

“No,” he said, like this hadn’t just happened. Like he hadn’t just enjoyed it a lot.

Like he hadn’t thought about it a lot before and pretended he hadn’t.

“Oh,” Grayson said.

“You thought I was?” Cam asked, still talking to the ceiling. Of course Grayson had thought Cam was gay, unless he tried to hook up with straight guys often. Who knew. Maybe he did.

“It was a gay bar,” Grayson said, like Cam was the one being dumb.

“What?” Cam’s eyes flicked to Grayson’s face and then away again. His face was red and flushed.

“You didn’t know?”

“Lee doesn’t tell me anything.”

Grayson grabbed the back of the couch and pulled himself up into a sitting position, hummed uncertainly, and shifted away from Cam. Cam stayed lying down, staring at the ceiling. Maybe if he didn’t move, nothing was true.

“I’m sorry,” Grayson said.

“What?”

“I hope you don’t think I forced you into that,” Grayson said, slow and deliberate. Cam looked at him. Grayson was looking down at his hands, fists in his lap.

“No,” Cam said. “No. It was okay. _Bueno_.”

Grayson nodded but didn’t look at Cam.

“I didn’t mean…” Cam saw him squint behind his glasses. Then he looked at Cam, locked eyes, and Cam felt weird still lying down. He sat up slowly, and Grayson said, “I didn’t mean to mess up meeting you again.”

“You didn’t,” Cam said quickly.

Grayson almost smiled, a little twitch in the corner of his mouth.

“I messed it up,” Cam said. He looked down at his own hands now. “I should have said something.”

“Right.” Grayson nodded.

Cam didn’t say anything, watched Grayson watching his hands clench and unclench. The silence in the apartment was so heavy Cam thought he could hear the bubbles fizzing in the soda bottles on the coffee table.

“Do you need a ride home?” Grayson asked eventually.

“It’s, uh, it’s late,” Cam said. Even now, he didn’t want to go home yet.

“It is,” Grayson agreed.

More silence.

“You could sleep on the couch,” Grayson said finally. “I have extra blankets.”

“Uhn-kay,” Cam said.


	5. Chapter 5

Cam could hear Grayson breathing. He couldn’t tell if those were the slow breaths of someone almost asleep, or pretending to sleep, or actually asleep. Some part of him hoped Grayson was just as hyperaware and awake as he was. Some other part of him doubted it.

Every time Cam shifted, the leather of the couch squeaked, so he tried not to move. Maybe, if he was quiet enough, Grayson would forget he was there. Somehow, after what had just happened, he felt mortified just knowing that Grayson was sleeping in the bed across the room.

He had to work at seven, and it was already almost four in the morning. Cam slid his phone out of his pocket, as slow and quiet as he could. Four fifteen in the morning, actually. He knew he wouldn’t sleep in the next few hours, but Grayson might.

How was he getting to work? He didn’t even know the address of Grayson’s place. He hoped there was a bus stop nearby. He’d leave before Grayson got up. Grayson knew where Cam lived—same house he’d been living in way back in high school—but Cam wasn’t sure if he’d remember, and he wouldn’t come looking for him, right?

Cam just wouldn’t ever go to that bar again. He would just avoid this part of town entirely—there was nowhere around here that he absolutely _needed_ to go to. He hadn’t run into Grayson once since Grayson had left A. Nigma—it should be easy to never run into him again, right?

* * *

At five forty-five, Cam slid out from under the blanket Grayson had given him. He’d slept in his clothes and his shoes—no reason to add his stupid smelly foot curse to the rest of the night’s embarrassments.

He snuck soundlessly towards the front door of the apartment. It had been a long time since he’d snuck around A. Nigma for Lee, but he still had the skills. He reached the door and sucked in his breath, carefully turning the lock, slow as he could. The lock slid open with a click that made Cam wince, but Grayson didn’t stir.

He tried to turn the door handle. It stuck. He gritted his teeth, jiggled the handle as quietly as he could. It didn’t budge. Considering how nice Grayson’s furniture was, his apartment was crap. The door handle seemed half rusted.

If he was gonna be trapped in this apartment with his weird one-night stand (oh god, the words tasted bad even in Cam’s head) because Grayson couldn’t afford a better door handle…

He jiggled the handle a little harder, tried to force it open. How quickly could he run out of the apartment if he just forced the door open and ran?

“Cam?”

“ _Mierda!_ ” Cam spat. He tried to wrench the door open, but the handle was still stuck.

“Are you okay?” Grayson asked. His voice was gravelly with sleep and Cam’s stomach did something weird.

“Yeah,” Cam said. He hit his forehead against the stupid door and groaned.

“Okay…” Grayson said, in a voice that made it clear he knew Cam wasn’t okay at all. “Do you need to go?”

“Yes. _Si_. I have work at seven,” Cam told the door.

“I’ll drive you,” Grayson said.

“No,” Cam said. He wanted to look over at Grayson, but it was easier to talk to the door. “I can take the bus.”

“I don’t mind,” Grayson said. Cam heard the rustling of blankets, heard the squeak of his wheelchair. “I wasn’t sleeping very well, anyways.”

Cam didn’t say anything. He sidestepped out of the way as Grayson came up beside at the door. He flicked his eyes to look at Grayson sideways. He was wearing flannel pyjama pants and a loose T-shirt. In the orange streetlight that filtered into the room through the slits in the blinds, he could see Grayson’s collarbones peeking out from the wide neckline.

Grayson turned the door handle smoothly.

“There’s a trick to it,” Grayson explained. “It sticks sometimes.”

“Yeah,” Cam said.

He followed Grayson outside to his car.

* * *

The car ride was painfully silent. The sun wasn’t up yet, the sky still a deep dusky purple. Orange streetlights flashed by. Cam kept his eyes on the windshield in front of him.

“Where’s your cousin’s restaurant?” Grayson asked finally.

Cam didn’t want to say McDonald’s. He didn’t want to go to work at all. He didn’t want to go home, either, though. Didn’t want to explain to his mom where he’d been all night, _especially_ didn’t want to show up with Grayson and have to explain that.

“Drop me off at the Tim’s by A. Nigma,” Cam said. “It’s right near there, and I need coffee.”

Grayson nodded. “Me, too.”

Cam tapped his fingers compulsively against his thigh. How long was it going to take to get rid of Grayson?

More silence. The bar and Grayson’s place weren’t that far from A. Nigma, but this drive seemed impossibly long.

Grayson reached for the radio. “Music?” he said.

Cam nodded, kept looking out the window.

He jumped, though, when a Dudes of Darkness song filled the car. It was from their newest EP, too, the one they’d just released on Bandcamp in September.

“You still listen to DoD?” Cam asked, looking over at Grayson.

Grayson flicked his eyes at Cam, grinned, and looked back at the road. “Yeah. I’ve been following them since high school. I’m impressed. Goob is a pretty good business man. Cyrus is a musical genius, of course.”

“Wow,” Cam said.

“Thought I’d forgotten about them?” Grayson asked, like a challenge.

Cam shrugged. “Didn’t think you were ever interested in them. Doesn’t seem like your kinda _musica_.”

Grayson laughed. “What seems like my kind of _musica_?”

Cam bristled at the way Grayson repeated the Spanish word. Cam had stopped dropping so much Spanish into his sentences, felt weirder about it the older he got, but sometimes the words slipped in, not because he didn’t know the English words, but because it felt right somehow, or he was just used to it.

“Thought you’d be into classical or something,” Cam said. “Smart music.”

Grayson laughed. His laugh wasn’t as high-pitched, wasn’t as nerdy-movie-villain-esque as it had been in high school. Maybe it was more real-villain-esque. Maybe it was just deep and breathy and nice.

“I do appreciate classical music,” Grayson acknowledged. “I like this, too, though. Anything that shows real skill.”

“I didn’t think you liked Cyrus,” Cam said.

Grayson scratched the back of his head with one hand and shrugged. “I didn’t like a lot of people when you knew me,” he said. “I did a lot of things I regretted. You know that, right?”

Cam looked over at Grayson. Grayson’s eyes were focused on the road ahead. His hands gripping the steering wheel seemed tense.

“I know,” Cam said. He did know. It didn’t mean he trusted Grayson, though.

“Thanks,” Grayson said.

Cam didn’t say anything.


	6. Chapter 6

Finally, finally, after they reached the Tim Horton’s, after they ordered their coffee, after Cam made up an excuse about needing to be at work early, after he gave Grayson a mumbling non-answer when he asked again what restaurant Cam worked at, after all that, Grayson finally drove away. Cam was finally alone.

He leaned against the brick side of the sketchy optometrist’s building next to the Tim Horton’s, held the paper coffee cup in both hands and breathed out hard. It felt like he’d been running all night, like he could only now catch his breath.

Then he remembered he had to go to work, and he couldn’t breathe again.

He let his head fall back and rest against the brick wall. He’d rather have a hundred ill-advised one-night stands with old high school frenemies than go back to work.

* * *

He went back to work anyways, because that’s just what you did. He slammed the door to the kitchen extra hard as he stormed in.

“Camillio!” Marco shouted, appearing in the back like the dark ghoul he was. “Don’t slam the goddamn door!”

“Shut your face, Marco! _Cállate!_ ” Cam shouted back. He flipped Marco the bird with the hand that wasn’t gripping his coffee like a lifeline.

Marco took a step back like Cam had just punched him.

“I had the worst night,” Cam said, brushing past Marco. “The weirdest night. Don’t talk to me.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Marco said, grabbing Cam’s shoulder.

Cam shook him off. “Just be happy I’m here.”

“I can make it so you never come back here, _cabron_.”

“ _Por favor_ ,” Cam said. “Do it.”

* * *

Marco did it.

Cam sat on the curb in the back parking lot of the damn McDonald’s from hell. He kicked at a soggy cardboard french-fry box and blinked hard. He kind of felt like he was going to cry. He dug the heels of his hands against his eyes.

He took a few deep breaths, and slid his phone out of his pocket, earbuds wound around it. He stuck the earbuds in his ears (it had been a long time since he’d worn his actual headphones around everywhere—once he’d started working at places with actual uniforms he’d had to stop) and turned the music up loud enough that it hurt his eardrums, and stood up. He threw his mostly full coffee cup against the side of the McDonald’s. Lukewarm coffee splashed across the wall. Droplets landed on Cam’s sweater.

He turned and started walking down the sidewalk. He turned at random corners, watched his feet instead of the streets.

He was somewhere along the highway that eventually led to the old Splat factory island when a DoD song came up in his shuffled songs. Not the one Grayson had played in his car, an older one, maybe even from tenth or eleventh grade. Cam wasn’t sure if this one was even available online anywhere—it might have been one of the ones Cyrus had given him personally way back.

Cam rubbed at his eyes with his hands again. He hadn’t talked to Cyrus in ages. When had he stopped talking to Cyrus? Why had he? There had been a time in high school when Cam and Brandy and Cyrus had been thicker than thieves.

Like Cam, Cyrus hadn’t gone to university, and for a while Cam had appreciated having at least one friend who wasn’t doing anything with their life either. But then the DoD actually got kind of big, online at least, kind of a cult following, and Cam had realized that Cyrus was doing more with his life than anyone else.

Oh yeah. That’s why he’d stopped hanging out with him.

The last time Cam had visited Cyrus, he’d been living in an apartment with his band above a little Chinese grocery store. He wondered if Cyrus was still living there.

* * *

The little Chinese grocery store was now a little Vietnamese grocery store. It looked like the DoD were still living above it, though, judging by the cloth banner hanging on the inside of the upstairs window, black with the band’s logo painted on it in white.

Cam took out his earbuds, shoved his phone in his pocket, and slipped into the narrow sidestreet between the grocery store and the thrift shop next door. He climbed the metal staircase on the side of the building, the staircase that bowed out in the middle and threatened to collapse with each step. It reminded Cam too much of metal rafters and monkeying around in high school, and he sucked in a deep breath.

He reached the door at the top of the stairs. The white paint was chipping off. _Dudes of Darkness_ was spray painted on it in purple and black. Cam glanced at the street below and grabbed the railing, dizzy. The railing creaked alarmingly and twisted slightly outward under the weight of Cam leaning against it, and Cam started knocking furiously on the door just to get off this death trap of a staircase.

No one answered. It suddenly occurred to Cam that, despite all his wandering around, it still wasn’t even nine o’clock. Cyrus rarely woke up before noon on a good day, and he was pretty sure the rest of the band was actually nocturnal.

Before he could consider walking back down the terrifying stairs, he heard the sound of the door’s many deadbolts being turned inside.

“Cam?” Skeeter stood in the doorway. His hair was even longer than Cam remembered, hanging all the way to his waist. He had deep purple circles under his eyes, and he was wearing nothing but boxers and a green cast on his arm.

“Hey, _ese_ ,” Cam said. “Cyrus home?”

Skeeter squinted at him. “I haven’t seen you in _forever_ , man. How long’s it been? A year?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Cam said. “Is Cyrus here?”

“Whoa. How you been, man?” Skeeter clapped Cam on the shoulder with his non-broken arm. “Come on in.”

Cam stepped off the death trap staircase, relieved. Then the place hit him—the smell of the place, musty and smoky and dirty and gritty and so familiar. Cam jumped right back into the past, remembered the hours he’d spent sitting in this cramped living room, losing Guitar Hero to Cyrus and trouncing him at Mario Kart.

He kind of wanted to take the stairs again.

“Is Cyrus here?” he asked again, except this time he kind of wanted Skeeter to say no.

“Yeah, but…” Skeeter ran a hand through his hair, flipping the limp blonde waterfall to one side of his head. He leaned closer to Cam. His breath smelled kind of sour in Cam’s face as he hissed a loud whisper, “ _He’s with someone_.”

“I’m not trying to ask him on a date,” Cam said quickly, throwing his hands up like Skeeter had a gun. Why was he giving off these vibes to everyone all of a sudden?

Skeeter laughed. “No, I mean he’s with someone right now. In the room.” Skeeter pointed at one of the apartment’s two bedrooms with his thumb.

As far as Cam had been able to figure out when he used to spend time with the DoD, neither of the rooms belonged to any of them in particular. Between the foldout futon couch in the living room, the two twin beds in the bigger room and the double bed that took up the entire smaller room, they all seemed to just sleep wherever they fell.

Skeeter was pointing at the smaller room and wiggling his eyebrows.

“Oh,” Cam said. His face felt hot. Of course this had been a bad idea. Everything lately was a bad idea.

Skeeter laughed. “Wait around, though. I’m sure he’ll wanna see you whenever he’s done in there.”

Cam’s face definitely got redder. “No, that’s fine.”

“Aw.” Skeeter frowned. “He missed you, you know. He talks about you a lot.”

Skeeter must have been able to see how red Cam was now. Cam ran a hand down his face, covered his mouth, tried to hide his cheeks inconspicuously.

“Oh! Lemme show you this!” Skeeter said.

“I should go, actually, _ese_ ,” Cam said, starting to sidle towards the door. The absolute last thing he wanted to see was Cyrus in his underwear swaggering out of the bedroom with a girl on his arm, all sex hair and bare skin.

“No, wait, just this,” Skeeter said, flapping his unbroken hand at Cam, motioning for him to wait.

Cam waited, halfway between the couch and the apartment door, bouncing on the balls of his feet with his hands in his pockets.

Skeeter swept fast food wrappers and ratty notebooks and miscellaneous socks off the coffee table and dug out an old laptop that Cyrus had had since high school. He flipped it opened, tapped the coffee table with his knuckles as he waited for it to boot up.

“This is great,” Skeeter said, looking at Cam over his shoulder as he waited for something to open. “You’ll love this. I’m glad you stopped by, man.”

Cam gave him a half smile. “Thanks.” There was something in his throat, some kind of emotion. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed hanging out with these guys.

At some point, he’d stopped doing a lot of things that he liked.

Skeeter nodded happily as iTunes opened on the laptop. He double clicked on something, then motioned for Cam to come closer. Cam took two steps towards the couch.

A guitar, and some drums, a sound that was unmistakably the DoD, but not a song of theirs that Cam ever remembered hearing. He stepped closer to Skeeter, leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen.

The track was called _cam_ , just those three letters, all lower case. Cam’s whole body flushed warm.

And then there was Cyrus’s voice, which Cam heard all the time on his iTunes, but was infinitely weirder standing in Cyrus’s apartment again. It definitely wasn’t anything Cam had ever heard before.

“ _Have these words, they can’t replace the life you—_

_Can’t ignore me, you must’ve broken down…_

_If you finally trust me, finally believe in_

_Yourself this time, and in all our attempts to get free—_ ”

“Good, yeah?” Skeeter said, looking up at Cam and grinning. “He didn’t tell us much about it, but he named it after you. Figured it was for you. Figured you’d come back and we could show it to you at some point.”

“Yeah,” Cam said, trying to listen to the song behind what Skeeter was saying. “Yeah, it’s good.”

Cam had helped Cyrus write songs before. Cyrus had jokingly written songs for him before, too, about video games and smelly feet and stuff, little tunes he’d make up while picking at his guitar while he and Brandy lounged around on Cryus’s couch.

This was different, though. This wasn’t a few lines Cyrus had made up to laugh about. He didn’t know what this was.

“ _She’s making me grow old, so don’t come slipping_

_Inside of my world—Take shelter from the exposure._

_I'm taking pictures with my mind,_

_And once upon a time,_

_I had you—Tried to be that someone_

_For you. I just live in this moment, so_

_Won’t you take it too far—I know…_ ”

They listened to the whole song, Skeeter nodding his head along to the beat, eyes closed. Cam bit his lips, tried to figure out why Cyrus would write this. He kept bouncing on the balls of his feet, kept leaning a little towards the front door, hopping Cyrus wouldn’t come out of the bedroom.

The song ended with screeching guitar and smashing cymbals, Cyrus wailing into the mic in a way that made Cam’s skin shiver. Skeeter pressed the space bar and looked up at Cam.

“Cool, hey?”

“Yeah,” Cam said. He flicked his eyes at the apartment door again.

“What’s your email, man? I could send this to you. Cyrus said you stopped answering your old one a while ago.”

Cam had stopped doing a lot of things a while ago.

“That’s fine,” Cam said. “Tell Cyrus it was _mucho_ cool, uhn-kay, _ese_?”

He half-ran to the door. Skeeter said something, something about how he should stay, and why was he leaving, and was he okay? Cam wasn’t listening. He raced down the rickety metal steps until he was on the street again.

He couldn’t get Cyrus’s song out of his head.

“ _Have these words, they can’t replace the life you—_

 _Can’t ignore me, you must’ve broken down…_ ”


	7. Chapter 7

Cam had made at least three of the worst mistakes he’d ever made in one morning, and the only person he knew who was better at making mistakes, or at least at getting into weird shit, was one Lee Ping.

So, because he’d already humiliated himself as much as he possibly could, Cam almost didn’t feel pathetic standing outside Lee’s dorm building at ten in the morning, texting him asking to be let inside.

The cool November air hadn’t gotten any warmer since six that morning, and Cam was stamping his feet and burying his hands in his pockets, trying to stay warm.

The dorm building door was finally thrown open by a tired-looking Lee in flannel pajama pants and one of Biffy’s too-big t-shirts.

“You okay, man?” Lee asked.

“No,” Cam said, brushing past him into the weird-smelling hallway. Lee let the door slam behind them, and followed Cam up the narrow stairs to the double dorm room that Lee shared with Biffy.

Cam’s shoulders sagged with relief when they stepped into the dorm room and he saw that Biffy wasn’t there. Biffy was an okay guy, but not the guy Cam wanted to talk to right now. If Biffy knew anything about Cam’s night, he would never let Cam forget it, which was exactly what Cam wanted to do.

He threw himself down on Lee’s bed and buried his face in his pillow.

“Haven’t you guys been having sex for years now?” Cam said, turning his head just a little so he could talk around the pillow. “Why do you still have separate beds?” It was easier to talk about Lee’s sex life than his own.

Lee’s face reddened a little and he laughed, ran his hand through his hair. “Shut up. That’s how the room comes.”

“You could push them together,” Cam suggested.

Lee shrugged. “Room inspections.”

“Why don’t you just move out? Get an apartment?”

“Dorms are cheaper,” Lee said.

“Isn’t Biffy’s family loaded?”

“Biffy doesn’t like taking money from his parents. Haven’t we talked about this before? What’s up, Cam?”

Cam buried his face in Lee’s pillow again.

“Did you lose your job again?” Lee asked.

Cam groaned and threw the pillow at Lee, who ducked. The pillow hit the wall across the room and landed next to a stuffed cat on Biffy’s bed.

“Why does everyone always assume that?” Cam griped. He pulled his knees up to his chest and leaned against the wall, curled into a ball.

“I mean…” Lee sort of half-grinned, but he looked kind of sorry for Cam, too. “You do have a track record…”

“Shut up, _ese_ …” Cam looked at his knees. “I did.”

“Cam…”

“That’s not the worst, though,” Cam said, and shook his head so hard his curls fell in his eyes. He rested his forehead on his knees and groaned again.

“What did you do?”

Cam felt Lee sit down beside him on the bed.

“I went home with Grayson,” Cam muttered.

“Oh, shit,” Lee said. “I kind of forgot about that. I was a little drunk last night. I mean, not that drunk. I remembered that Grayson was there and stuff. I forgot how you guys were looking at each other, though.”

Cam’s head snapped up and he stared at Lee. “What?”

Lee shrugged. “Kind of looked like you guys wanted to go home together.”

Cam threw his hands up in the air and wished he had another pillow to throw at Lee. “You didn’t tell me it was a gay bar, and then you sent me home with a guy who looked like he wanted to hook up with me without telling me?”

Lee leaned away from Cam, looking worried.

“I—I’m sorry, man, I thought you knew. I would have taken you home with us if I didn’t think you wanted to—”

“I wanted to play pool and then go home!” Cam interrupted. Which wasn’t exactly true, maybe, because he had been the one to suggest they keep the night going.

Cam wasn’t really sure what he’d wanted last night.

“I’m sorry,” Lee said again.

“It’s whatever, _ese_ ,” Cam said. He didn’t want to be mad at Lee. He rested his chin against his knees.

“So what happened?” Lee asked.

Cam didn’t say anything.

“Did… something happen?” Lee asked.

Cam didn’t say anything.

“Was it… okay?” Lee asked. “I guess, I mean, I guess I shouldn’t have trusted Grayson. I haven’t seen him since high school. Have you? And I guess he wasn’t the best guy back then…”

“It was fine,” Cam said into his knees. “It was good, I guess. Grayson was fine. I just don’t know why it happened.”

“Sometimes things just happen?”

“I’m not even gay,” Cam said. He ran his hands down his face.

“Oh,” Lee said.

“Did you think I was?” Cam asked, turning his head to look at Lee again.

Lee shrugged. “Guess I don’t really think about that much anymore. Seems like everyone I know is kinda gay.”

“I think that’s a university thing. That’s a university thing, right?” Cam said. “Experimenting?”

Lee laughed. “Maybe. I think it’s just a people thing, though.”

Cam shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Is that what this is about?” Lee asked. “’Cause you know we’re all—”

“ _No se_ , man. Dunno. It’s _Grayson_. And _Cyrus_ , and—”

“Cyrus?”

“He wrote a song for me.”

“You haven’t talked about Cyrus in ages, dude. I kind of thought you guys stopped talking or something.”

Cam shrugged. “Kind of.”

“He wrote a song for you? Like a love song?”

“I don’t know. Just a song.”

“And he showed it to you?”

“Skeeter did.”

“When?”

“Today,” Cam said. “This morning. I went to go see Cyrus, but he was having sex with some girl in his room so Skeeter showed me the song and I left.”

Lee laughed, and Cam stared at him, and Lee put on a straight face. “Sorry. You did a lot this morning.”

“Yeah,” Cam said. “Feels like I did more this morning than I’ve done in months.”

“Gosh, I wish,” Lee said. “I wish I had less to do.”

Something in Cam’s stomach curdled.

“Speaking of which… I’m sorry, man, but I have like three assignments to hand in online tonight and I haven’t finished any of them, so…”

Cam slid off the bed and stepped towards the door. “Yeah, of course. _Claro_ , _ese_. I’ll head out.”

“If you need anything…”

“It’s fine, _ese_ , fine,” Cam said. He grabbed the door handle and nodded at Lee. “I gotta go tell my mom I was fired, anyways, before she hears about it from Marco first.”


	8. Chapter 8

Which was a complete lie, because obviously Marco had called Cam’s mom the second Cam stormed out of the McDonald’s, so Cam didn’t have to break the news to her. In fact, the longer he could stay away from home, the better. But he was running out of people to go to.

Brandy and Holger would be at the theater all day prepping for the final showing of their performance. And… honestly, Cam didn’t really have any other friends. Not ones he’d stayed in touch with. He barely stayed in touch with the ones he _did_ stay in touch with.

He had himself. Who wasn’t really his favourite person, but it seemed like all he had left. So he wandered around some more, without music, just in case the DoD came on again.

He ended up at A. Nigma.

Which was just about the weirdest place in the world now that there was no more cyborg principal or brainwashing rooms. There wasn’t even a tazlewurm mascot anymore, after it had been deemed too dangerous to keep in the school. It had moved in with Lee, and when Lee started living in a dorm that didn’t allow pets, he and Biffy actually managed to hide a cat and a tazlewurm in their dorm for an entire semester before they got caught. At which point Kan had offered to keep Taz and Rumple K at his place.

Kan—Lee’s brother. It had taken Cam years to stop thinking of him as The Serpent, or as Stink Ninja. He’d gone by Li for a while, which was apparently his real name, but that was too confusing, too weird, and he’d seemed relieved by the name change when he picked Kan. It had taken a lot of convincing for Biffy to let his cat live in the same house as Kan’s murder snake, but Kan was great with animals. A lot better than with people.

Cam actually considered visiting Kan, just so he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts, but with the way the day was going, he’d probably accidentally end up making out with Lee’s brother, and Cam definitely didn’t want to have to explain that to Lee.

So Cam hiked across the football field, climbed up the bleachers until he was kind of sweaty and out of breath, and sat down.

Now that he didn’t have a mind-numbing job to go to, he didn’t have anything to do. The overwhelming feeling of having _nothing_ rolled over him, crashing against his chest like a physical punch.

He wasn’t sure if it was better or worse than the mind-numbing job.

* * *

He waited until it was dark out to go home. Really dark, late enough that maybe even if his mom had stayed up to pounce on him when he got home, she would have given up and fallen asleep. Maybe.

He slogged up to his house, dragging his smallish legs. He winced when the automatic light over the front door came on, but the door didn’t burst open, so that was a good sign. He unlocked and opened the door as slowly and quietly as he could. He was good at sneaking, when the door wasn’t as shitty as Grayson’s, from years of helping Lee and running around at night with Cyrus and Brandy.

He let the door click shut softly. The kitchen and living room were dark. He tip-toed to the basement door, opened it soft and slow. He took one step down the stairs when the basement lights suddenly flicked on.

He screamed and jumped back. Angelina stood at the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the light switch, grinning wickedly.

“You’re late,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning her hip against the wall.

“Angelina...” Cam hissed. “You trying to kill me, _chica_? Trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Mom fell asleep in the living room waiting for you,” Angelina said. “She’s maaaaad.”

Cam gritted his teeth. “Yeah? Why were the lights off if she was waiting for me?”

“Turned them off,” Angelina said. She flipped her curly hair off her shoulder and smirked. She carried the whole thirteen-year-old thing too well. “To scare you.” She jumped at Cam, hands up like claws. “Boo!”

Cam jumped a little, then scowled and started down the stairs. “You little—”

“Moooom—”

Cam leaped down the last of the stairs and slapped a hand over his sister’s mouth. “If you wake Mom up, I’ll kill you,” Cam hissed into her ear.

She wiggled out of Cam’s grasp and laughed. “Whatever. She’ll kill you tomorrow morning.” She danced away from Cam, hopped up the stairs. She turned when she got to the top and wiggled her fingers at Cam in a wave. “ _Adios_ , bro.”

* * *

“ _¡Camillio Esmereldo Martinez! Ven arriba. ¡Ahora!_ ”

Cam started awake to the sound of his mom screaming at him from upstairs. For a second he thought maybe he could just stay here forever. Maybe if he buried his head deep enough in his pillow, and pulled his blanket high enough over his head, maybe he could pretend nothing else existed, especially not his mom.

“If you don’t come upstairs _right now_ , Camillio, I will come down there and make you wish you were never born!”

Cam groaned, rolled off the couch and stumbled to his feet.

“ _I_ wish you were never born, Camillio!”

Cam winced. He grabbed an oversized t-shirt off the floor and pulled it over his head, searched around for pants on the floor.

“ _¡Ahora, Camillio!_ ”

He heard her footsteps, the sound of her pulling the basement door open. He raced to the stairs, jumped up them two at a time so they were standing face to face at the top of the stairs.

“ _Mierda, Camillio, ¿qué hiciste?_ ” She grabbed him by the ear, shouted in his face. “ _¿Qué voy a hacer contigo?_ ”

“Let me go!” he shouted, tried to wince away from her. “ _¡Déjame, mama!_ ”

She didn’t let go, dragged him to the living room, still holding his ear, all four foot ten inches of her somehow twice as strong as Cam.

She released his ear, pointed at the couch with one sharp-fingernailed hand, and he sat.

“What happened?” she demanded. “What happened, Camillio?”

Cam looked down at his knuckles. His mom snapped her fingers in his face, and he looked up at her.

“I got fired,” he said.

“I know, Camillio. Marco called me. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Cam shouted. “Marco was an asshole! He hated me from the start, _mama_.”

“Don’t use that language with me.” Her hands were fists at her sides. Cam realized his hands were fists, too. He loosened them. “Marco’s your cousin. _Familia,_ Camillio. He’s a good boy. It was so generous of him to get you that job, after you—”

“I didn’t want that job! I didn’t want any of these jobs!”

His mom threw her hands in the air, palms open. “What do you want, Camillio? You want to be rich? You want to sit in your house and not work a day in your life, Camillio? You want that? You can’t have that, Camillio. That’s not how life works!”

“I know! I know that.” Cam did know that. “I don’t. That’s not what I want.”

“What do you want, then? What are you trying to do, Camillio? Explain it to me. I don’t understand. You’ve had so many good jobs and you throw them all away. I want to know what you think you’re doing. You want to live here forever, under my roof, sitting on that _maldito_ couch like a potato?”

“No!” Cam shouted. He stood up, and his mom stared him with thin lips and angry eyes, and he didn’t sit back down. “No!”

“You wanna live on the streets, then? You been doing drugs? You been meeting bad people? What’s happening, Camillio?”

“ _Nothing,_ ” Cam shouted. “Nothing.” And it was nothing. Too much of nothing. His whole life was a bunch of nothing and it made his skin crawl and he wanted to explode out of all the nothingess. 

“Maybe you should take your _nothing_ out of this house, then. Go find somewhere else to live with all your nothing. I can’t keep finding jobs for you to lose, Camillio.”

It felt like something was bursting in Cam’s chest.

“Maybe I will!” he shouted back, but there wasn’t any fire in his words.

This felt inevitable, sort of, like there had been a ticking timer until the moment his mom would kick him out, and neither of them were surprised by it.

They looked at each other in weird silence for a few seconds. They both had clenched fists.

His mom collapsed first, her shoulders slumped and her angry face going sad.

“You were such a good boy before, _mi hijo_ ,” she said, softer than before. “Remember Brandy? What a good girl. You were so happy. What happened, Camillio?”

Cam shrugged.

“Nothing.”

He went downstairs.


	9. Chapter 9

Cam was shoving clothes and colognes he never used and books and DVD cases into his backpack and an old duffel bag, because at least packing to leave (even if he didn’t have anywhere to go and he didn’t know when his mom expected him out) gave him something to do in the nothingness.

He heard the distant ring of the doorbell from upstairs. His mom or Angelina answered it, and then there was someone at the top of the basement stairs.

Cam looked up. It was like looking at a ghost.

Cyrus stood at the top of the stairs. He’d hardly changed. His brown hair still hung around his shoulder in a wild mane of curls. He wasn’t wearing his tophat, but Cam didn’t doubt that he still had it somewhere. He had a bandana tied around his forehead instead, and a Nirvana tank top hung from his skinny shoulders.

“Hey,” he said.

Cam said nothing.

“So, Skeeter said you came by yesterday,” Cyrus said. His voice was all deep and musical and it wasn’t that Cam had forgotten how he sounded, but more that he’d forgotten how much he liked how Cyrus sounded.

“Yeah,” Cam said.

Cyrus vaulted over the railing and landed in a crouch on Cam’s floor, all agile and acrobatic.

He didn’t come any closer to Cam, though, stayed at just enough of an awkward distance. He looked at the open backpack and duffle bag, the stuff strewn all over Cam’s floor.

“You going somewhere?” he asked.

“Leaving,” Cam said.

“Leaving the city?”

Cam couldn’t read his expression.

“Leaving this house,” Cam said.

Cyrus nodded, looking something like impressed. “Where you moving to?”

For a moment, Cam imagined telling Cyrus that his mom had kicked him out.

He imagined Cyrus inviting him to live with the DoD, at least until he got back on his feet. He imagined living in the tiny apartment above the Vietnamese grocery store, imagined sitting on the old futon couch playing Guitar Hero and Mario Kart, imagined living with a bunch of guys who weren’t in school either, who were doing something, who were the opposite of nothing.

He didn’t doubt that Cyrus would offer it, even if they hadn’t talked in too long.

“Moving in with a friend,” Cam said instead.

“Yeah? Cool,” Cyrus said. “Someone I know?”

“Nah,” Cam said.

Cyrus nodded. The awkward distance between them stayed distant and awkward.

Cam started slowly packing again. For some reason, it seemed weird to ask why Cyrus was here. Cyrus sat on the arm of the couch, propped his stripy socked feet on the coffee table.

“So, Skeeter showed you the song?” Cyrus asked, watching Cam pack.

Cam didn’t look up. “Yeah. It was good.”

“Thanks, man,” Cyrus said. “I’ve missed running songs by you, you know?”

“I’ve missed hearing them,” Cam said. Which was true.

“So what’s up, man? It’s been forever. What’ve you been up to?”

“Working,” Cam said.

“Yeah? Where?”

“McDonald’s,” Cam said, because somehow it didn’t seem as bad to say that to Cyrus as it would’ve been to tell Grayson.

“Cool, man.” When Cam didn’t offer anything else, he continued, “The DoD’s been doing great. Did you see how well our last single did on iTunes? It’s rad, man. So many fan mixes, too. You should look ‘em up on YouTube, you’d like them.”

“I’ve seen a few.”

“Yeah? You’ve been keeping up with our music?” Cyrus asked, and he sounded so thrilled, so pleased, and Cam had forgotten how much of a sap Cyrus was.

“I’m a fan,” Cam said, and he looked up at Cyrus, and he grinned, because somehow Cyrus’s music was always the easiest thing to talk about. “I gotta keep up.”

Cyrus hopped off the couch and crouched down beside Cam. He started tossing balled up socks and old paperback history books into Cam’s duffle bag. Cam hadn’t actually planned on bringing all the books—he hadn’t read them in a while, probably since high school—but he didn’t stop Cyrus.

“You should come over,” Cyrus said. “Come play a game or something. Listen to more of our demos. We’re working on our next album. We’re thinking this might be the one that gets us an actual deal.”

Cam thought about it. He shoved his old red coat into his bag, next to his laptop and his headphones, stuffing the matted fake fur hood down so it wouldn’t get caught in the zipper. He zipped it up and looked over at Cyrus, smiled.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure, _ese_. That sounds great.”

* * *

Goob and Rud were making pizza in the kitchen. Or at least, that’s what Cam thought they were doing. It kind of looked like they were making a kitchen-sized model of a bloody murder scene involving tomato sauce, grated cheese, and some actual blood from grating knuckles instead of cheese.

“Cam!” Goob shouted when he saw Cyrus and Cam walk in, toting Cam’s backpack and duffle bag. “How you doin’, man?”

Cam grinned wide. “Not bad, _ese_. _Bueno_.”

Goob came over and gave Cam a high five, then grabbed his hand and pulled him into a crushing hug, thumping him on the back.

Rud, a few bloody paper towels wrapped around his fingers, gave Cam a huge grin and a thumbs up.

Skeeter, sprawled out on the sofa with an acoustic guitar in his lap, waved his bright green cast at Cam.

“Nice, bro! Glad you could make it,” he said.

Cam grinned. “Same, bro.”

“You still trynna play that with your broken arm?” Cyrus asked, tossing Cam’s backpack on the floor beside the couch and nodding at Skeeter’s cast.

“Yeah, man, I think I can do it.” He wrapped his half-cast-covered fingers around the neck of the guitar and winced.

Cyrus shook his head and laughed. “Wait ‘til he tells you how he broke it,” he said, and looked back at Cam.

“Hey!” Skeeter said. “It’s Rud’s fault that the trampoline wasn’t there in time!”

“It’s your fault for thinking you could jump from the top of the stairs!” Rud shouted from where he was dropping fat slices of sausage onto the maybe-pizza.

Cam threw himself down on the couch between Skeeter and Cyrus and grinned. He’d forgotten what it was like to be one of the guys.

He’d missed it.


	10. Chapter 10

Cam woke up, sprawled out on Cyrus’s couch, surrounded by dirty pizza plates. His phone was buzzing in his pocket. His eyes felt glued shut. It had to have been at least three in the morning when they finally called it a night, and it barely looked light out past the black DoD cloth in the window.

He groaned and fished his phone out of his pocket. Three texts from his sister, and two missed calls.

He called her back.

“What the hell, Angelina?” he muttered into the phone. “I was asleep.”

“Some guy in a wheelchair is here to see you,” she said.

Cam sat straight up. His hand tightened around the phone. “What? Grayson?”

“Iunno,” Angelina said. “I don’t know him.”

“You’ve met Grayson before,” Cam said. “When I was in grade ten?”

“Oh yeah,” Angelina said. “You were scared of him.”

“Shut up. What does he want?”

“You, apparently. You didn’t tell your friends Mom kicked you out?”

It felt weird, hearing it said like that, coming from her mouth.

“Whatever. Tell him I’m not home.”

“I did. He asked me where you were and I said I didn’t know and he asked me for your number.”

Cam’s heart felt like it was beating unhealthily fast. “Did you give it to him?”

Angelina scoffed. “Do you think I’m stupid? No, I said I’d call you. Why do you think I’m calling you now? Took you long enough to pick up, too, bro. I almost did give it to him.”

Cam blew out a long breath and ran a hand through his curls. “Tell him I didn’t pick up.”

“Um, he can see me talking to you right now. You want me to give him the phone?”

“No!”

“I think he heard that.”

“ _Mierda._ ” Cam clenched and unclenched his fist that wasn’t holding the phone. “Fine, give him the phone.”

“’Kay. Also, fyi? He’s cute. Nice arms.”

“Wha—Angelina!”

“Hi.” Grayson’s voice. Cam stiffened.

“Hi.”

“So, I asked your sister when you would be home, and she said never, so I wanted to make sure you’re okay—”

“I’m fine,” Cam interrupted. “Why did you come to my house?”

Grayson cleared his throat. He hemmed, actually _hemmed_ , like a cartoon character. “I wanted to see you again, I suppose. Is that okay?” He sounded so pitiful. Cam almost felt sorry for him, except he had too much experience not trusting Grayson.

“I don’t know,” Cam said. He rubbed the space between his eyes. He didn’t have a headache, exactly. Maybe Grayson was a headache. “I thought that was, like, a one-time thing.”

“Oh.”

Cam sucked in his breath, waited for Grayson to say something else.

“Okay,” Grayson said finally.

“Uhn-kay?” Cam said. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved. He got ready to hang up the phone, let his thumb hover over the end call button.

“I suppose…”

He put the phone back to his ear.

“I suppose I didn’t want it to be a one-time thing,” Grayson said.

Cam sort of felt like he was choking, except he didn’t have anything to choke on.

“It was… very nice…” Grayson said slowly, like he was choosing his words carefully. “Did you not enjoy it?”

Cam felt like he was drowning. He actually grabbed the back of the couch, like maybe it could hold him up during this conversation. “It wasn’t bad,” Cam said finally.

“But you don’t want to do it again. Alright. That’s alright. I don’t want to force you into anything. I don’t want you to think of me like that, Cam.”

Cam liked the sound of his name out of Grayson’s mouth. Hadn’t he called him Camillio in high school? Cam sounded nice coming from him.

“Wait,” Cam said. “I don’t think of you bad, Grayson. You’re a cool dude. You’re cool. We could hang out, if you want.”

“Really, Cam?” It was like Cam could hear him smiling.

“ _Si._ I guess.”

“Where? Where are you living now?”

“How about your place?” Cam suggested, ignoring the second question. “Or Jenny’s bar. Or—”

“There’s a bakery near my place that has amazing flan,” Grayson interrupted. “We could go there.”

It was better than Grayson’s apartment. Cam didn’t know why he’d suggested that. “Yeah, sounds good. Uh, when, today?”

“Perfect! At noon, I don’t work today,” Grayson said.

“Uhn-kay.”

And then Grayson hung up, and Cam had maybe just agreed to a date with Grayson.

And Angelina had almost definitely been listening.

Cam lay back on the couch and groaned.

* * *

He told Cyrus he had to work at noon, and had to make up a quick story about Marco dropping dead cockroaches in the fryer to convince Rud that no, he definitely didn’t want to come with Cam to McDonald’s.

Grayson had texted him a little while after the phone call ( _your sister gave me your number!_ ) and told him the address of the bakery. It was called _Chez Élise_ , which sounded uncomfortably fancy to Cam.

He’d changed into his only button up shirt (it was red and kind of wrinkly and tight around the arms and he hadn’t worn it since his anniversary dinner with Brandy last year) and black jeans that weren’t _too_ saggy, and Cyrus had asked him if that was his McDonald’s uniform and Cam had just laughed and raced out of the apartment. He wasn’t sure if he was under or overdressed. He wasn’t sure if this was a date, even. He wasn’t sure what he wanted it to be.

Grayson was already there when Cam stepped into the bakery. It was definitely _less_ fancy than he’d expected, but it was a bakery with actual seating inside, so that was kind of fancy.

Grayson was sitting at one of the little plastic tables, wearing a light blue button up that was a lot less wrinkly than Cam’s shirt.

It definitely did seem like a date, though. Cam’s cheeks got hot and he hoped they weren’t as red as his shirt.

“Hey!” Grayson said, as Cam sat down across from him. “You look good.”

“Yeah.” Cam looked down at the table, tapped a beat against it with his chewed up fingernails. “Your shirt’s not wrinkly.”

Grayson laughed, and Cam winced.

Grayson ordered flan for the both of them, and a bored-looking girl from behind the counter brought it to their table. Grayson dug in right away. Cam tapped his white plastic fork against the side of the paper plate. He didn’t know what he was doing here.

“Try it,” Grayson said. “It’s great. The best I’ve had.”

“Holger makes the best flan,” Cam said, kind of defensively, kind of because it was true.

“You still hang out with them? Holger and Lee? You guys were always together,” Grayson said. He sounded almost jealous.

It seemed like it had been a long time since Cam had really hung out with Lee and Holger, just the three of them. Grayson’s words made something inside him ache.

“Yeah,” Cam said. “Holger’s doing drama at the university. Lee and I saw his show the other day with some friends.”

“They were at the bar the other night, too, weren’t they?” Grayson said.

Cam nodded. He tried the flan. Good, but Holger’s was definitely better.

“So, you’re not living at home anymore? Your sister’s kind of cryptic.”

Cam laughed. Angelina could definitely be cryptic.

“ _Si_ ,” Cam said. “I just moved out.”

“Where?”

Cam hesitated too long.

“Where?” Grayson repeated. He sounded concerned.

“With a friend,” Cam said, feeding Grayson the same lie he’d fed to Cyrus. He realized he would actually have to find a friend to live with soon, or his mom would be right about him living on the streets.

“Who?” Grayson asked. He sounded like he didn’t believe Cam.

Cam ducked his head and looked at his flan instead of at Grayson. Grayson was a good liar. Maybe he was good at spotting liars, too.

“You don’t know them,” Cam finally said, which was the fakest line.

“Do you… do you need somewhere to stay?” Grayson asked, doing the careful-picking-of-words thing again.

Cam tapped his fork against his plate some more.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I guess. It’s fine. I’ll find somewhere. I could probably stay with Cyrus, if I had to, or—”

“You could stay with me,” Grayson said quickly.

“No.” Cam shook his head. “No, that’s fine.”

He looked up, then, and Grayson’s eyebrows were downturned miserably. He looked… sad, really.

“You don’t have a lot of room,” Cam said quickly. “And I can’t pay rent, and—”

“It’s fine,” Grayson said. “I’m lonely, all alone in that apartment. I do a lot of my work from home, and all of my schooling online. It would be nice to have someone around. I could even buy another bed, or a fold out couch.”

“I—”

“And you don’t have to pay rent, keeping me company will cover it.”

“I—”

Grayson gave him a white-toothed smile. He leaned forwards a little. Even with the shirt, Cam could tell that Angelina was right. He did have nice arms.

“Just try it,” Grayson said. “You can leave if it’s not working… And if you have somewhere else to go.”

Cam winced. “Uhn-kay.”


	11. Chapter 11

Cam could have just told Cyrus he was going to be living with Grayson.

He could have told Cyrus about running into Grayson a few days ago for the first time since high school, about getting to know Grayson again. (He could have even told him about the hooking up part, except of course he wouldn’t.) He could have told Cyrus about Grayson wanting a roommate and offering the position to Cam, rent free.

He could have also told Cyrus about being kicked out. He could have asked Cyrus for a place to stay and not ended up in this weird situation with Grayson at all.

But of course he didn’t do any of that, and instead he came back to Cyrus’s place after his short “shift”, grabbed his backpack and his duffle bag and muttered something about going to the house of the friend he was moving in with, and fed Cyrus the same lie again, “You don’t know them.”

And Cyrus didn’t question him, and didn’t really say anything, and Cam just left, and he hated that he didn’t feel as good as he’d felt last night.

“That’s everything?” Grayson asked, after Cam threw open the passenger side door of Grayson’s car and tossed his bags into the bag seat.

“Yeah,” Cam said. “Don’t have that much stuff.”

Grayson nodded. “I guess I don’t have that much room.”

Cam couldn’t believe this was happening.

* * *

They sat on either side of Grayson’s sleek white dining table and didn’t talk. They’d been roommates for less than a day and Cam already felt kinda bad for eating Grayson’s food. He wondered if he’d have to help pay for groceries. He wondered if he could live with himself if he didn’t. He wondered how long he could go without a job and actually pay for anything.

“You were different in high school,” Grayson said.

Cam’s head snapped up. Grayson was leaning his cheek against one hand, poking at the chicken and salad on his plate with his fork, staring at Cam.

“I guess,” Cam said. “Got older. Grew up.”

Grayson nodded. “I suppose. You’re not at all how I remember you, though.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re much… quieter.”

Cam snorted. “Learned to stop being such an annoying kid,” he said.

Grayson pointed his fork at Cam. “I didn’t think you were annoying.”

Cam didn’t know what to say. It was weird to take compliments from the guy who’d literally worked hard to make his life hell five years ago.

“Uhn-kay,” Cam said finally. “Well, you were the only one.”

Grayson popped a potato in his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “I doubt that,” he said. “Everyone loved you.”

“No one loved me,” Cam said and laughed. He speared a potato, then slid it back off his fork.

“You were class president,” Grayson said, and there was something in his voice that sounded old and angry, made Cam’s skin shiver with memories from when Grayson really did hate him, or something like it. “You had so many friends. You were smart and you were cool and you were friends with Lee Ping and you were dating a Glamazon. Everyone loved you.”

Cam looked at Grayson, tried to read his hard eyes.

“Maybe,” Cam said finally. The way Grayson said it, it did sound like Cam had had it all. It didn’t feel like it now, though, looking back. “Maybe no one likes me now.”

Grayson shrugged. “I like you.”

Cam shoved food in his mouth and didn’t answer. They finished eating without talking.

* * *

“So do you want to share, or—”

“The couch,” Cam interrupted, before Grayson could finish his thought. “I’ll sleep on the couch, it’s fine.”

Grayson looked disappointed, but Cam couldn’t handle the idea of another one-night stand with Grayson. Or maybe he couldn’t handle the idea of their one-night stand becoming more than that.

He usually just slept in his boxers, but he also usually didn’t sleep in the same room as someone else. He took his backpack into the bathroom to change into an old T-shirt and shorts.

The bathroom was pretty big, and the shower was wide and looked newer than the rest of it, like it had just been put in. There was a plastic bench in the shower, and a metal bar along the side of it, and one beside the toilet. It was weird. Cam knew Grayson used a wheelchair—it was kind of hard to miss—but he’d known Grayson since elementary school, and somehow it was a detail about Grayson that was easy to forget.

He’d never asked Grayson how or why he was in a wheelchair, if it was something he was born with or if something had happened to him before third grade. He’d never thought much about how the wheelchair made Grayson’s life harder, other than being teased about it when they were kids, and even then, it seemed more like Grayson had been teased for being a nerd than being in a wheelchair.

Cam has always thought of Grayson as some kind of Professor X, or like a campy movie supervillain, smart and sneaky and so far above being human that he didn’t even bother to walk. He wasn’t someone who needed a seat in their shower.

Except of course that’s not how real life worked.

Cam brushed his teeth and slipped out of the bathroom and curled up on Grayson’s couch under Grayson’s blanket and shut his eyes and pretended not to listen to everything Grayson did as he got ready for bed.


	12. Chapter 12

“Camillio Esmereldo Martinez, what the _hell_ is going on in your life?” Brandy demanded.

Cam winced and pulled his phone a couple inches away from his ear. He was wandering around outside Grayson’s apartment, because Grayson never left and Cam had only been living with him for a few days but he couldn’t stand being inside with him all the time.

“Cyrus said you moved out and you won’t tell him who you’re living with?”

“You still talk to Cyrus?” Cam asked.

“Of course,” Brandy said. “We didn’t all stop talking to all of our friends as soon as we graduated.”

“Right,” Cam said, but somehow he was kind of surprised that Brandy and Cyrus talked. He’d thought the three of them had fallen apart. Apparently, he was the only one who’d fallen away.

“Seriously though, Cam, where are you?”

Cam didn’t say anything. Brandy would read any lie he could come up with.

“Goddamit, Cam.” She paused. Then, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “ _Muy bueno, chiquita_. No worries.”

“Then why won’t you talk to anyone, Cam? No one knows what’s going on in your life. Lee said you talked to him the other day but he said you didn’t sound like you were doing great, and, okay, Lee’s a _terrible_ liar, I know he wasn’t telling me something. But come on, Cam. We’re friends, right? We said we’d stay friends.”

There was something in Cam’s throat. Something hard and heavy and he didn’t know what to say.

“Yeah,” he said. “ _Si, chiquita._ We’re still friends. I’m sorry.”

“Good,” Brandy said. “Now tell me where you are.”

Cam bit his lips. His thumb hovered over the phone screen, almost ended the call. Then, “I’m at Grayson’s place.”

“Grayson? _Grayson_? Grayson from high school?”

“Yeah,” Cam said. “I ran into him at Jenny’s bar the other night.”

“I saw that,” Brandy said. “I was there, Cam, and you barely looked at me, remember?”

Cam winced again.

“How are you living with him now?”

“It’s a long story,” Cam said.

“Tell me!” Brandy said.

Cam imagined telling Brandy he’d had sex with Grayson. He imagined his old girlfriend, his first for pretty much everything, the girl he’d left not because he didn’t love her anymore but because he wasn’t enough for her anymore and he knew it better than she did—he imagined telling her he’d hooked up with their high school enemy and moved in with him without talking to any of his friends that actually gave a shit about him.

“I gotta go,” Cam said, and hung up.

His phone buzzed a second later, and he could imagine Brandy on the other line, her manicured hands tapping her phone case and her plucked eyebrows furrowed angrily, impatiently. He didn’t pick up.

* * *

Holger called that night.

Cam’s phone buzzed five times before he picked up. He figured Holger was probably calling because Brandy had put him up to it, or maybe Brandy was even calling on Holger’s phone, but Cam picked up anyways. Maybe he missed Holger.

“Cam!” Holger shouted. Cam pulled the phone away from his ear, but sort of grinned. Holger always sounded so excited, so stupidly excited, in a way that made it easy to pretend to be annoyed but hard to actually be annoyed.

“Hey, Holg,” Cam said. “What’s up?”

“Holger is missing Cam,” Holger said, in his serious voice that would’ve sounded like a joke coming from anyone else.

“Miss you too, _ese_ ,” Cam said. “Just busy.”

“Cam is always saying that,” Holger whined. “But Brandy says Cam is living with Grayson now. Cam has time for Grayson but not for Holger?”

It was almost as if Cam could see Holger’s lip quivering.

“Nah, bro, that’s not it,” Cam said. Except that was it, or something like it, because he had spent more time with Grayson since he’d run into him in a goddamn bar than he’d spent with his best friends in the past year.

“Cam should come eat the deer brains and fish heart stew with Holger tomorrow,” Holger said excitedly, and Cam pretended to gag. “Or the French fries and burgers, which the Lee Ping will be eating.”

“You and Lee are having lunch tomorrow?” Cam asked.

“Yes! And Cam is invited.”

It would be easy to say no. It would be easy to keep lying and say he was working. But there was no _reason_ to lie, and Cam still felt skin-crawlingly awkward under Grayson’s roof, so he said, “Uhn-kay, _ese._ What time?”

* * *

Lee and Holger were sitting across from each other in the university cafeteria, hunched over a phone screen. Cam slid into the seat beside Holger, putting down his plastic tray with two slices of greasy caf pizza and a paper cup of sub-par apple soda.

“Cam!” Holger said happily. He threw his arms around Cam’s neck and almost choked him. Cam coughed and tried to smile. “I am showing Lee the funny cat videos!”

Lee laughed. “I’m pretty sure Biffy’s shown me every single cat video on the Internet, but you gotta appreciate the Holgermeister’s enthusiasm.”

Cam let Holger show him half a dozen YouTube videos of sneezing cats, and then they moved on to videos of people dancing to Spooky Scary Skeletons (“It’s November, Holger.” “But they are the best dancing skeleton costume men, Lee!”) and bad covers of ABBA songs. And then Holger’s phone battery died, and Lee said he had to get back to studying soon, and Holger’s lower lip jutted out and started to quiver.

“Don’t you have class today, Holg? It’s Thursday,” Lee said, standing up and throwing his bookbag over his shoulder.

“Yes,” Holger said in a small voice. “But Holger is missing the happy fun times with his best friends until the old man times!” Actual tears started to glitter around the edges of Holger’s eyes.

“Hey, it’s not like this is the last time we’ll hang out,” Lee said. “Right, Cam?”

Cam bristled at the way Lee looked at him pointedly.

“Yeah. O’course, _eses_ ,” he muttered.

Lee leaned towards Cam a little. “You okay, man?”

“I’m _fine_ , shut up,” Cam said. “Why does everyone think something’s wrong with me?”

Lee and Holger exchanged a look that Cam didn’t like.

“Because Cam has not been his good Cam self since the ancient times!” Holger exploded, throwing his arms passionately around Cam like he had to hold him in place.

Cam shook him off. “God, _ese_ , I’m _fine_.”

“Brandy said that you’re not living at home anymore, and you didn’t even tell us,” Lee said.

“I don’t have to tell you everything I do,” Cam said, bristling.

Holger was actually crying now. Lee wasn’t, but he looked sad, and Cam was just _mad_.

“We just care, man,” Lee said.

“No, you don’t _get_ it,” Cam snapped. He stood up and grabbed his tray with white knuckled hands. “We’re not living the same life anymore, guys.”

“We’re just in university, Cam, we’re not on another planet,” Lee said.

“Same thing!” Cam shouted. “You guys are doing stuff with your life. You’re fucking _happy_.”

“And you’re not?” Lee asked, too softly.

“I’m working dead end jobs and getting kicked out of my house, Lee, and I’m probably gonna be doing that for the rest of my life!”

“You got kicked out?”

Cam didn’t answer. He didn’t want to look at Lee’s furrowed eyebrows or the tears on Holger’s cheeks. He stormed away from the table, threw his tray on top of the garbage cans and stormed out.

“Cam!” Lee shouted, and Holger wailed loudly, and Cam got a lot of satisfaction out of how loudly he managed to slam the cafeteria door.

* * *

Brandy accosted him at the university bus stop.

“Holy shit, Cam, what did you do?” she demanded, storming across a crosswalk while the cars on either side screeched to stops and honked at her.

“Did Lee text you?” Cam grumbled.

“Yeah, and thank god. You need me.”

“I don’t need anything,” Cam said. “I need you to leave me alone, actually.”

Brandy shook her head. “You’re depressed, Cam.”

Cam balled his hands into fists, stepped away from Brandy. “Don’t say that,” he said. “Don’t make me sound like a nutcase.”

“It doesn’t make you a nutcase, Cam, oh my god. It makes you a person who’s having a hard time.”

Cam chewed on the inside of his mouth. “I’m not having a hard time.”

“Sure, and I’m not wearing my roommate’s hand-me-down jeans because they are _so_ goddamn soft.”

“What?”

“Just chat with me, Cam, okay? We used to do that, remember?”

Cam felt something weird and heavy at the base of his throat. “Yeah, used to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. That’s my bus. I gotta go.”

“Camillio Esmereldo Martinez, you get your _ass_ back here now—Cam, I’m serious, I—Oh my god.”

* * *

It wasn’t actually his bus. He didn’t know where this bus went, but it was the first one that had shown up, and he couldn’t listen to Brandy telling him he needed her for another second.

He rested his head on the cool glass window and breathed on it, making foggy patches. He drew a frowning face with Xs for eyes with his index finger, and then rubbed it out with the heel of his palm.

He kind of felt like an asshole, but he kind of felt like a terrible person all the time now, so it wasn’t much of a change.

He figured he’d ride the bus until it got to somewhere he recognized. He leaned his forehead against the window and let the cold numb his head.


	13. Chapter 13

“Grayson?” Cam was shivering and his fingers felt stiff with cold as he held his phone to his ear, under the hood of his sweater so it wouldn’t get wet from the rain that was streaming from the sky.

“Cam?” Grayson’s voice sounded groggy, like maybe he’d been sleeping. But it was only five at night, so he’d probably just been so absorbed in his computer work that he might as well have been asleep.

“I… I need you to pick me up.”

“Are you okay?” Grayson asked. Cam winced at the question. He was getting tired of hearing it.

“I’m f-fine,” he said. He was shivering so hard it was making him stutter, and he hated it. “I just t-took the wrong bus and I’m stuck in the rain at a bus stop and the next bus doesn’t c-come for an hour and a half and—”

“Where are you?” Grayson interrupted.

Cam told him, and then sat down heavily on the edge of the curb. This was one of those stupid bus stops with no shelter, and of course it was raining.

Cam had fallen asleep on the bus, and it must have done at least one loop, because it hadn’t even been two o’clock when he’d left the university. When he woke up and realized it was dark and raining and he had no idea where he was, he’d rushed off the bus at the next stop.

And then he’d realized that he was at the wrong end of town, in the middle of nowhere, and the sign nailed to the metal bus stop sign was telling him that this bus only came every hour and forty-five minutes.

He’d stood around for fifteen minutes debating whether he should wait or attempt to walk to the next nearest bus stop, except he didn’t know where that was, and he couldn’t afford goddamn data on his phone to pull up a map, and it had only taken fifteen minutes for the ice rain to wear down his pride enough to make him call Grayson and ask for a ride.

And now he was cold and wet and shivering _and_ embarrassed about the whole damn day.

When Grayson finally, finally showed up, like half an hour later, Cam yanked open the passenger side door and slammed it against the rain. And then he felt bad for getting Grayson’s nice leather seats all wet with his dripping clothes, so he looked down and curled up against the window, trying to take up as little room as possible.

“What happened?” Grayson asked as he pulled a U-turn in the middle-of-nowhere road.

“Told you,” Cam muttered. He was still shivering. “Took the wrong bus.”

“Weren’t you going out for lunch? How did you end up out here at five at night?”

Cam didn’t answer. He sniffed and rubbed at his running nose with the back of his hand. Great, he probably had a cold now.

“I’m glad you called me, though,” Grayson said after a long silence, his voice deeper and softer.

“Yeah, well, you were kind of my only choice,” Cam said. He blew on Grayson’s window, then didn’t know what to draw in the patch of condensation he’d made.

“You can call me whenever you need help,” Grayson continued. Cam watched the condensation fade slowly on the window. “I don’t mind.”

“Yeah,” Cam said. Then he glanced at Grayson out of the corner of his eye, without turning his head. “Thanks.”

* * *

Cam was still shivering when they got home.

Grayson tossed his keys on his bedside table and looked over at Cam, dripping by the front door.

“You should take a warm shower,” Grayson said. “I’ll make hot chocolate.”

“You don’t have to baby me,” Cam said.

Grayson shrugged. “I want hot chocolate, too.”

Cam grabbed his backpack from where it now lived next to the sofa. Grayson watched him drip across the floor to the bathroom.

“You really don’t have to keep your stuff in bags,” Grayson said. “The chest and the shelf are yours.”

Grayson pointed his thumb at the black chest he kept tucked under the coffee table, and the bookshelf next to the TV that he’d emptied when Cam had moved in.

“It’s fine,” Cam said, and shut the bathroom door behind him.

It wasn’t that he thought he was going to leave any time soon. It’s not like he had anywhere else to go. But it was one thing to be couch surfing at Grayson’s place, living out of a backpack. It was something else to actually move in with him.

He stripped out of his wet clothes and dropped them in a heap next to the shower. He turned the hot water up all the way and stepped into the steamy, burning spray. Grayson had said he could move the bench, but Cam felt wrong disturbing anything in Grayson’s place, so he stood in the narrow space between the bench and the shower wall and let the hot water beat down on him.

When Cam finally finished rubbing his skin raw with the soap he’d tossed into his bag with all the colognes (Grayson had also said he could use any of his soaps or shampoos, but Cam felt wrong using those, too), he stepped out of the shower and shivered when his feet hit the cold bathroom floor. He pulled on socks and sweatpants and an old long-sleeved shirt that was worn thin and holey. He tossed his wet heap of clothes into the shower, slipped his perpetually smelly feet into his shoes, and padded out of the bathroom.

“I left my wet clothes in there,” he said, tossing his backpack on the couch. “Guess I should do laundry soon.”

Grayson nodded. “There’s a communal laundry place in the basement. We’ll do that tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to do it with me.”

“I should do my laundry, too.”

Cam nodded, and accepted the mug of steaming hot chocolate that Grayson offered him. They sat opposite each other at Grayson’s dining room table. There were only two chairs, but because Grayson didn’t need one, there was always an awkward empty chair between them. It somehow made it so much more obvious that they were alone, just the two of them. Cam kept his eyes on the empty chair instead of on Grayson as they drank.

“Thanks, again,” Cam said finally, flicking his eyes towards Grayson for a second.

“For the hot chocolate?” Grayson asked. He did this thing where he grinned with one half of his mouth and kind of winked, and Cam couldn’t remember if he’d done that in high school, too, and he couldn’t decide if he liked it or not.

“Yeah. For the hot chocolate.”

“Any time. I made it with real cocoa, too,” Grayson said, and Cam had to laugh at how proud he sounded.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Cam said, but he was grinning behind his mug.


	14. Chapter 14

Grayson put the mugs in his fancy stainless steel dishwasher, and then he picked up the latest Brick McSlam movie from a stack of BluRays on the floor under the TV.

“You watch Brick McSlam?” Cam asked, coming up behind him.

“Of course,” Grayson said. “They’re terribly inaccurate and unrealistic, but kind of funny, if only to laugh at Brad’s awful cameos.”

Cam snorted. “They get worse with every movie he’s in, man.”

Grayson nodded. “I haven’t figured out if Brad’s aware of it or not.”

“Nah, Brad’s not aware of anything.”

“So, you want to watch it?” Grayson asked.

“Sure.”

And then they were sitting beside each other on the couch watching the third instalment in McSlam’s awful vampire hunting franchise, and maybe they were sitting a little closer than they really needed to be, and maybe they were kind of leaning into each other. But they were watching a movie, and besides, Cam was pretty sure Grayson was doing most of the leaning.

When the vampire queen leaned into Brick McSlam’s neck at the height of the least sexy almost-sex scene Cam had ever seen, Grayson turned his head and nipped at Cam’s neck. Cam shot to his feet, his whole body starting with shock.

Grayson looked up at him, wide-eyed, holding himself up with his arms where he’d been leaning against Cam moments before.

“I’m sorry,” Grayson said. “Was that okay? I was just kidding around.”

Cam touched the side of his neck. It wasn’t like Grayson had actually hurt him. He just hadn’t expected Grayson’s mouth anywhere near his neck.

“I’m fine,” Cam said, slowly sitting back down, not quite so close to Grayson this time. “Just don’t vampire out on me, uhn-kay?”

“Right, sorry,” Grayson said. He sat up straighter, pushing himself up with his arms and leaning back against the back of the couch. He flicked his eyes at Cam. “Guess you just make me thirsty.”

Cam felt his face go all blood red, and he stared intently at the TV screen.

Sometime between the last fight scene and the last kiss with the leading lady, Grayson leaned his head against Cam’s shoulder. Sometime between the last kiss with the leading lady and the credits, Cam rested his head against Grayson’s.

The credits ended, and the movie went back to the opening menu. Ominous vampire music played in the background as Grayson nuzzled his face into Cam’s neck.

“It’s cozy here,” he said. “Don’t really want to get up.”

Cam felt his skin tingle.

“I gotta… I gotta use the bathroom,” he said, and wiggled his way out of Grayson’s grasp.

He peed, and splashed cold water on his face, and leaned against the sink and stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked almost as homeless as he felt. There were dark circles under his eyes, but he couldn’t remember a time when his bad sleep habits weren’t written on his face. His hair was a nest of curls that should’ve probably been cut months ago. He was scruffy, too.

He hadn’t thought to bring a razor with him and he hadn’t wanted to use the razor Grayson had offered him, and he really needed to do some kind of shopping trip before his scruff turned into an actual beard. He’d tried growing a beard in his last year of high school and had ended up with an itchy goatee that Brandy had threatened to break up with him over.

He ran a hand over his scruffy face and shook his messy curls and left the bathroom.

Grayson was still on the couch, lying on his side watching McSlam stab a vampire over and over again on the menu screen. They’d turned off most of the lights to watch the movie, and the blueish light from the TV screen lit up Grayson’s face ominously. He looked small, though, lying on the couch.

Cam sat down on the arm of the couch and Grayson looked over at him.

“I hope you don’t think I’m trying to get something from you,” Grayson said.

Cam shook his head, shrugged.

“I really do like you. I liked you back in high school, too, I think.”

Cam looked down at his hands, picked at the skin around his fingernails. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“That why you blackmailed me?”

He looked up, then, and saw Grayson wince.

“Not mad about it,” Cam said quickly. “Just wanna know. I got teased in elementary school, too, _ese_. Why’d you target me so hard?”

Grayson coughed. He pushed himself up into a sitting position again, leaned against the back of the couch again. “Maybe it was because I liked you. I wanted attention from you. But it was also. You know. _Because_ you got teased in elementary school.”

“What?”

Grayson shrugged. “Everybody hated both of us when we were kids. But then you got cool, and everyone loved you, and everyone still hated me.” 

“I don’t think anyone hated you until you started blackmailing them.”

Grayson buried his face in his hands, rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. “Maybe they didn’t hate me. But I wasn’t cool. I was still a loser and a nerd and a weird kid and I didn’t have friends and I wasn’t the school president or the leader of a rock band.”

“Yeah, why’d you target Cyrus so hard, too?”

“Same thing. Remember how he used to stutter when we were kids? He got teased for that. And then he took speech therapy and got better at talking and _great_ at singing and he was more popular for his middle school band than I’ll ever be for anything.”

Cam had known Cyrus stuttered as a kid—he’d already been taking speech therapy when Cam met him in third grade, and his stutter was already a lot better, and mostly gone by fifth grade, but Cyrus had mentioned it sometimes when they used to hang out a lot. He still stuttered a little bit, when he was tired or drunk or really excited.

Cam didn’t really remember Cyrus being bullied, though. He’d been too busy being bullied to notice the other kids, really.

“So, what, you were mad that we were being happy instead of making up revenge plans?” Cam asked.

Grayson looked up at him, bit his lip. “Yeah. I guess. I was awful in high school, wasn’t I?”

“Kind of,” Cam said.

Grayson nodded. “Yeah. Kind of. A lot.”

“I mean, when there were literal actual evil people at our high school, you really weren’t the worst,” Cam said.

Grayson’s eyes crinkled around the edges when he smiled. “I’m not as evil as literal actual evil people? That’s good.”

Cam laughed, and slid onto the couch beside Grayson. “Yeah. Could be worse.”

Grayson leaned against Cam again, and Cam let him. He pressed his face against Cam’s chest and said, “You should sleep in my bed.”


	15. Chapter 15

They both lay perfectly still, on their backs, just far enough apart that they weren’t touching, but close enough to feel the half an inch of space between them.

“Do you want to cuddle?” Grayson asked into the dark.

“I don’t know,” Cam said.

He felt Grayson shift beside him, and then Grayson’s strong, toned arm was resting across his chest. Cam shivered.

“Is this okay?” Grayson asked.

“It’s fine,” Cam answered. He didn’t move.

He felt Grayson’s hair, all soft and silky and smelling like some kind of musky shampoo, against the underside of his chin as Grayson rested his head on Cam’s chest. They lay still and silent for a long time, until Grayson’s warm breath against Cam’s neck was slow and steady and even and Cam was sure he was asleep. 

Cam was also sure he wouldn’t fall asleep at all. Until he did.

* * *

Cam felt warm and sleepy and cozy. He blinked awake, and saw Grayson curled up next to him, their foreheads almost touching. Grayson’s hair was wispy and messy, fanned out on the pillow they were sharing. He had little freckles along the bridge of his nose and he slept with his mouth slightly open, breathing softly against Cam’s face.

Cam really needed to pee, but he didn’t want to move, didn’t want to wake Grayson up, didn’t want to disturb his soft and sleepy face, didn’t want Grayson to open his eyes and look at him and have this night actually be real.

Grayson kept sleeping, though, and Cam _really_ had to pee, so he softly eased out of bed. He padded quietly across the apartment.

When he came out of the bathroom, Grayson was sitting up in bed, leaning back on one arm and running his other hand through his hair. He was blinking sleepily, and he squinted at Cam as he approached the bed.

“Good sleep?” Grayson asked, grinning up at Cam.

“Yeah,” Cam said. “More comfortable than the couch.”

Grayson beamed. “I’ll make pancakes.”

* * *

Cam sat at the kitchen table, sitting on his knees, a habit from when he was a kid and even shorter. (He was only _kind of_ short now.) He leaned against the table and watched Grayson making pancakes.

“You need any help?” Cam asked.

Grayson looked back over at him, smiled. “I’m good.”

He was good. He was good at cooking, and everything in the small kitchen was organized so he didn’t have to move much from where he sat in front of the counter. The counter was sort of inconveniently high for someone sitting down, but Grayson seemed used to it. Of course he was.

“Have you always been in a wheelchair?” Cam asked, and then wondered if that was something he wasn’t supposed to ask.

Grayson looked over at him for a second, grinned again, and then went back to whisking his pancake batter. “Yeah,” he said. “Spina bifida. An incomplete closing of the backbone and spinal cord membranes before birth.” He glanced over at Cam again. “It’s a thing you’re born with.”

“That sucks,” Cam said.

Grayson shrugged. “Kind of, yes. Lots of surgeries when I was younger, that was the worst part. It messes up your brain, too. I have dyscalculia and ADHD, did you know that?”

“No. Isn’t dyscalculia, like, math dyslexia?”

“It is,” Grayson said.

“But you’re, like, a math genius.”

Grayson waved his spatula above his head as if to punctuate what he was saying. “You think people just become geniuses without adversity?”

“Guess not,” Cam said.

Grayson poured some pancake batter into the pan and the smell of frying batter wafted over to Cam. Grayson flipped the pancake and turned his chair sideways to sort of face Cam. “You can ask me more questions, you know,” he said. “I don’t mind. People are always curious but no one ever wants to ask.”

“Isn’t it kind of a weird thing to ask about?” Cam asked.

“Why would it be?” Grayson asked. “I like talking about myself.”

Cam laughed. “Okay. What happened to that computer thing you had on your wheelchair in high school?”

“Oh, this?” Grayson pressed a button on one of the arms of his chair and a small computer screen flipped up. “It’s still here. Having it out all the time was pretty inconvenient. And _strictly_ speaking it isn’t all that useful when I carry a phone and a tablet around anyways, but customizing this chair is one of my many hobbies.” He flipped the first pancake onto a plate and poured more batter into the pan.

“It’s pretty cool,” Cam said, looking at the sleek silver chair. “The one you had in elementary school didn’t have the joystick thing, did it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Grayson said. “That wasn’t my customization. I used a manual chair when I was young, one you have to push yourself, but I don’t have very good upper body strength so I switched to an electric chair to get around better.”

“Your upper body looks great to me,” Cam said, leaning forwards across the table a little.

Grayson laughed. He flexed his toned arms and grinned at Cam. “I mean, my arms are fantastic, but I don’t have feeling or movement until about here.” He put one hand on his chest, just under his pecs. “I can’t use my stomach muscles to help push myself, so it’s not very convenient. I work out to keep the guns in shape, though.”

He finished the second pancake and flipped it onto the plate, too. He held it out to Cam. “There’s maple syrup in the fridge.”

Cam got up and grabbed the bottle out of the fridge—the real expensive stuff, not the cheap Aunt Jemima stuff his mom bought. He drowned his pancakes in syrup and started stuffing his face.

Grayson was really good.

* * *

Cam sat on Grayson’s couch, playing the only Mario game Grayson had—his video game collection was mostly real time strategy war games and stuff. Grayson was sitting at his desk, next to his bed, headphones over his ears as he hunched over the keyboard. The tap-taping of his keyboard and the clicking of his mouse were like a steady background track in this apartment.

Grayson surfaced from his computer bubble after a few hours and asked Cam if he was hungry, and then started making pasta.

“Yo, I can’t believe you’re a professional hacker,” Cam said, his eyes still on the TV screen.

“It’s a great job,” Grayson said. “I was just doing my online classes, though.”

Cam winced involuntarily at the mention of school. “Science, right?” Cam asked.

“And computer engineering.”

“Right.”

“You still want me to send you the information about their History department?”

“Yeah. Sure. Uhn-kay. That would be good,” Cam said. He’d almost forgotten that he’d mentioned that idea to Grayson.

* * *

That evening, curled up on the couch with his laptop in his lap, Grayson tap-taping on his computer again, Cam opened up the online school links that Grayson had sent him.

The tuition made him cringe.

He could really only afford to take one class, and he didn’t know if it was worth spending the tiny savings he had on one online class that wasn’t going to amount to anything. But he started reading the class descriptions, and they had one on historical relationships between America and Cuba, and another one about world music history, and ones about plagues and conquests and then suddenly he was signing himself up for _HSTR101: Discovering the Past_.

“I’ve heard they have good profs for that intro class,” Grayson said.

Cam jumped, looked over his shoulder. He hadn’t noticed Grayson coming up behind him, looking at his laptop screen over the back of the couch.

“Uh, yeah,” Cam said. “Sounds like an interesting intro class.”

“You know, I didn’t know you were interested in history.”

Cam shrugged. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

Grayson nodded. “That’s true.”

“So, you want to watch something tonight?” Cam asked quickly.

They started watching movies every night. And cuddling on the couch. And sleeping in Grayson’s bed. They didn’t kiss, though, or have sex, and it was the weirdest limbo Cam had ever been in, and he wasn’t sure why he liked it so much.


	16. Chapter 16

“We should go somewhere,” Grayson said.

Cam looked up from where he was sitting on the couch, his laptop open on his lap, reading his history homework.

“Where?” Cam asked.

“Out. There’s a club downtown that has great music,” Grayson said.

Cam sat up, shifted his laptop off his lap. “You know, I never expected you to be the club type, yo.”

Grayson grinned. “I’m very surprising. Also very gay, and usually very single.”

“Usually?”

Grayson shrugged. “I don’t know what I am right now.”

Cam didn’t say anything.

“So, you want to go?” Grayson asked.

“Is it a gay club?”

“It’s an everyone club. Do you want it to be a gay club?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Cam said. He stood up. “Sure, let’s go.”

* * *

Cam stood in front of the mirror, looking at his wrinkled button up. He’d started keeping some of his things on Grayson’s shelf and in his chest, but he was never very good at keeping his clothes wrinkle-free, even when he wasn’t living out of a bag.

“How fancy is this place?” Cam shouted through the bathroom door.

“A little fancy!” Grayson shouted back. “You need something to wear?”

Cam hesitated. He poked his head out of the bathroom. “I don’t think your clothes would fit me.”

They had very different body types. Even sitting down, Cam could tell that Grayson’s legs were a lot longer than his, and thinner. Grayson’s shoulders were broader and more muscled, too, but he was thinner than Cam—who didn’t think of himself as _fat_ , exactly, he just liked food more than exercise.

“Hold on,” Grayson said. He pulled open the apartment’s one closet, between the front door and the foot of his bed, and pulled two hangers out and held them up to Cam. A large, loose white T-shirt with a black pocket on the breast, and a dark grey peacoat. “Try these.”

Cam padded across the apartment and took the clothes from Grayson. He took his shirt off, turning his back halfway to Grayson, and slipped on the white shirt, which was just big enough, and the peacoat over top, which was a little wide around his shoulders, and probably wouldn’t button up right if he tried, but wearing it loose over the shirt, it fit okay. It was made of warm, thick wool, which Cam appreciated—early December snow had been falling all week.

He turned back to face Grayson.

“You look great,” Grayson said. His eyes wandered up and down Cam’s body.

Cam took a step back. “Yeah?”

Grayson nodded. “Yeah.” He looked down at Cam’s feet, then up at Cam’s face. “You have any other shoes?”

He was wearing the same sneakers he always wore, the only pair of shoes he’d brought with him when he’d left home—the only pair he really owned, other than a pair of winter boots that he hadn’t thought to grab when he’d left home. “No.”

Grayson looked down at both of their feet. Grayson’s feet were kind of small, but probably not much smaller than Cam’s. Grayson reached into the closet again, leaned down and grabbed a pair of shiny black boots from a low shelf stacked with more shoes than someone who didn’t strictly _need_ shoes should really own. “These might fit you,” he said, and held the boots up to Cam.

Cam looked down at his sneakers. He really didn’t want to take his shoes off in front of Grayson. He made sure to only slip his sneakers off at the last moment whenever he got into bed with Grayson, slipped his feet under the covers at quick as possible and hoped Grayson didn’t notice the lingering smell. He changed his socks as often as he could, too—his goddamn smelly foot curse was one of his biggest embarrassments. Even in all his years of dating Brandy, he’d never really liked going barefoot even around her.

“My shoes are fine,” Cam said.

“Try them on,” Grayson prodded.

Cam took the shoes, but didn’t put them on.

“C’mon.”

Grayson had to have noticed that his feet smelled awful, even if he did try to hide them under the covers. He just hated the idea of taking his shoes off on principle.

“What’s wrong?” Grayson asked.

Cam gritted his teeth.

“Nothing,” he said.

He dropped the boots in front of his feet, slipped off one sneaker and tried to shove his foot into the boot as quickly as possible. The laces were tied tighter than he’d expected, and he had to sit down and pull the laces undone, and his smelly foot was just sitting out in the open.

“Are you okay?” Grayson asked.

“My feet stink, uhn-kay? It’s a curse, I swear,” Cam said, yanking the laces loose. He stuck his foot into the boot.

Grayson laughed. Cam went red. “Shut _up_.”

“I’m sorry,” Grayson said, still laughing. “You just look so flustered.”

Cam didn’t say anything, pursed his lips as he loosened the laces on the second boot, slipped off his other sneaker and shoved his foot inside. He yanked the laces of both boots tight, tied them in big loops.

“They look great,” Grayson said.

Cam stood up. “I’m gonna stink up your boots,” he muttered.

Grayson laughed again. “It’s fine. I don’t really wear those. They look better on you.”

“You can’t just give me stuff,” Cam said.

“Look at yourself,” Grayson said, and nodded at the full-length mirror that hung on the inside of the closet door.

Cam kicked his smelly sneakers towards the couch, away from Grayson, then stood in front of the mirror.

He did look good. He ran a hand through his hair, then over his smooth jaw (he’d finally bought a few essentials at the corner store near Grayson’s place, including a razor) and stood sideways, looking at his shoulders framed by the grey peacoat. The black boots, tall and shiny, made his black jeans look somehow cool instead of worn and lazy with sneakers.

He looked almost _put together._ He flicked his eyes at Grayson. “You’re good at this.”

Grayson looked proud. “I’m good at _lots_ of things.”


	17. Chapter 17

Grayson parked down the street from the club, opened the driver side door, reached behind his seat for his chair and pulled it out onto the snow slick pavement. He eased himself into his chair, adjusted his feet, black sneakers with silver zippers up the sides, on the footrests.

Under his sleek winter coat, he was wearing a loose black tank top that showed off his toned arms, with a math equation (“Radius of a circle equation,” Grayson said when he put it on and showed it to Cam) printed in white across the front, and tight red jeans that made his thin legs look even thinner. He looked a little bit like a model, Cam thought, with his hair all swept back and soft-looking, his thick-rimmed glasses, the way he seemed to know he looked good but didn’t care.

Cam hadn’t thought Grayson looked _bad_ in high school, exactly, but he would never have expected Grayson to look like any kind of model, wouldn’t have expected him to know anything about fashion, about looking goddamn _attractive_.

“When did you become gay?” Cam asked. He stood close beside Grayson, almost leaning into the side of his wheelchair as they headed up the snowy sidewalk. It had stopped snowing, but the ground was still icy, and they made their way slowly. The club was in the busiest part of downtown, and the parking lot was pretty far away from anything.

Grayson laughed. “ _Become_ gay?”

“You know. Figured it out,” Cam said.

Grayson shrugged. “Before I left A. Nigma, if that’s what you’re asking. I knew I was gay in high school. Some people knew, mostly the genius club.”

Cam flicked his eyes up and down Grayson’s form, didn’t even try to pretend he wasn’t checking him out. It was dark out, and Grayson wasn’t looking at him, anyways.

“You weren’t this… I don’t know, yo, _stylish_ in high school,” Cam said.

Grayson laughed harder, looked up at Cam. In the orange light coming from a late-night Chinese restaurant they were passing, Cam could see the happy wrinkles around the corners of his eyes. “You think you become gay and then you become stylish?” Grayson asked.

Cam shrugged. “I dunno. Guess not. Lee and Biffy don’t look like models. But they don’t hang out at gay clubs, either. They kind of just stay in their dorm together and do homework.”

“I heard those two got together,” Grayson said. “I figured Biffy was gay, so much overcompensating, but Lee Ping?”

“I mean, I guess he’s bi,” Cam said. He looked at his fingernails. “He and Tina dated for a little while. I think they really did like each other at some point, but they waited too long.”

“Yeah?” Grayson said.

Cam nodded. “Lee was already obsessed with Biffy and Tina already had a thing for Jenny when they started dating. It didn’t last long.”

Grayson nodded. “You know, I never expected any of them to be gay. Maybe Holger. Or you.”

“Me?” Cam asked.

Grayson shrugged. “I got the vibe. You and Cyrus. You and Holger. You and Lee.” He looked up at Cam, wiggled his eyebrows at Cam in a way that was silly but somehow attractive, too. “You and me.”

“Shut up,” Cam said.

“Seems like everyone was a little gay at A. Nigma,” Grayson said.

Cam shrugged. “Maybe. I think maybe everyone’s a little gay, sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Grayson asked.

“Like when you meet certain people at certain times, and realize maybe you were wrong about yourself.”

Grayson nodded. “It happens.”

* * *

The line leading into the club was almost a block long.

“Holy shit,” Cam said.

Grayson nodded. “You can reserve a spot on the guest list in advance and you don’t have to wait,” he said. “But we’ll get in eventually. It’s not too cold tonight, and it’s early.”

Cam pulled his phone out of his pocket. It was after eleven.

“Early?”

“It’s open until three,” Grayson said. He looked up at Cam. “You don’t go out much, do you?”

Cam shrugged. “Don’t have a lot of money. And my friends aren’t really the club types.” Which was sort of not really true, because Brandy and Holger _loved_ clubs, and even Lee and Biffy went to bars, and the DoD played in clubs all the time.

It was more that Cam hadn’t spent time with his friends much since he’d turned nineteen and was actually old enough to go to clubs. He didn’t tell Grayson that, though. Didn’t really let himself think it, either.

The line inched forwards. Cam leaned against Grayson’s chair, messed around with apps on his phone, checked out the other people waiting in line. A few guys were wearing loose t-shirts under their coats and baggy jeans, but mostly everyone was dressed up nice, girls in tight black pants and guys in expensive jackets. Cam was glad Grayson had offered him his clothes.

When they finally, finally got to the front of the line, half an hour later at least, the bouncer took their IDs and looked them up and down. He was a broad-shouldered, thick-eyebrowed guy who reminded Cam of Steve (another guy from high school that Cam hadn’t seen in too long). His eyes lingered on Grayson for a while.

The girl standing just inside the door took their coats and the cover charge. Grayson whipped out two bills, paying for Cam before he could even reach for his own wallet.

He didn’t really want Grayson paying for him, exactly, but he also didn’t really have enough money to be at this nice club at all. He didn’t say anything.

They moved towards the dance floor. Cam leaned down as they entered the club, half-shouted in Grayson’s ear over the thumping music that was already assaulting their ears. “The bouncer was totally checking you out.”

Grayson shook his head, gave Cam an almost patronizing look. “No. He was just staring at the wheelchair.”

Cam leaned back a little. “How do you know?”

“Believe me, I have a lot of experience with both. I know how to tell them apart.”

It hadn’t actually occurred to Cam that the guy might have been staring at Grayson’s wheelchair. There was so much more of Grayson to look at than just the chair.

He did wonder what Grayson was going to do here, though. He couldn’t really dance, could he? What else was there to do at a club?

Honestly, Cam hadn’t ever really been to a club at all. The bar where he’d run into Grayson was the first bar he’d been to in ages, and before that he’d mostly just tagged along with Lee and Biffy to the campus pub sometimes.

So he didn’t really know what you did at a club.

He followed Grayson.

The main room of the club was long and narrow and high-ceilinged and packed so full of people that Cam was sweating just from stepping inside. The thumping music dug right into Cam’s bones. Lights flashed through the dark room, rainbow colours, blinding, flashing like thousands of cameras going off, making Cam dizzy and drunk without even drinking anything.

Two long bars ran along either side of the packed dance floor. Grayson approached one, and Cam hung back just behind him.

“What do you want?” Grayson shouted.

Cam shifted from foot to foot. He felt like he should order something. But the flashing lights that made his eyes and his brain throb were making him feel weird enough. The idea of getting drunk made his skin tingle in an ugly way and he shook his head.

“I don’t drink!” he shouted back.

“Never?”

Cam shook his head.

Grayson nodded, ordered something for himself. Cam hung back, stood by some tall stools by the corner of the bar. A girl with blonde hair piled high on her head leaned towards him, drunk and giggly, and told him she liked his boots.

“Sorry,” Grayson shouted, coming up next to Cam, holding a glass of something bright blue in the hand that wasn’t operating his wheelchair.

“What?” Cam shouted back.

“I thought maybe you drank sometimes. I should have asked earlier. Is it okay that we’re here?”

“It’s fine,” Cam said. “It’s fine, I just don’t like drinking.”

Grayson nodded, looked unconvinced, and Cam didn’t feel like explaining himself. Not in this loud place that made it hard to talk and hard to think. Not ever, really.

The drunk girl leaned past Cam to get up in Grayson’s face. “Hey!” she shouted.

“Hey!” Grayson shouted back, smiling at her.

“You have a wheelchair.” She hiccupped.

“I do.”

“Can you dance?”

Grayson’s eyebrows went up, his smirking smile all lit up by the thumping lights. “You want to see?”

She nodded enthusiastically, and Grayson looked past her to look at Cam.

“You want to?” Grayson shouted.

“What?” Cam shouted again.

Grayson slammed his drink back in one go and put the glass down on the counter beside them. He held out his free hand to Cam. Cam glanced between Grayson and the drunk girl. She giggled.

He took Grayson’s hand.


	18. Chapter 18

As it turned out, Grayson could dance. Or something like it, anyways. He moved his chair a bit with the joystick, but mostly he moved his shoulders and his arms and leaned towards Cam in a way that somehow made Cam’s throat feel heavy and tight. He moved in time to the music like a dancer, like someone who knew exactly what he was doing, and exactly how good he looked.

They didn’t get a wide berth, exactly, on the sardine-crowded dance floor, but Grayson’s chair did give them a little more breathing room than everyone else. People were watching them, too. Cam wasn’t stupid—he could tell that a guy in a wheelchair was a little bit of a novelty, something for people to stare at. But he figured, he knew, they were also watching how good Grayson looked.

Cam felt somehow excited and tingly that _he_ was here with this guy everyone else was checking out. He leaned into Grayson, let his body move to the music, hoped he looked half as good as Grayson.

Grayson leaned up, reached up with one arm and looped it around Cam’s neck, pulled Cam down towards him. Cam leaned down, smashed his lips into Grayson’s, kissed him hard. Grayson’s other arm wound its way around Cam’s back, his lower back, onto his ass, and then Grayson pulled Cam in, hard, and Cam sort of toppled into Grayson’s lap. He huffed a breath of laughter into Grayson’s mouth, then sat down on Grayson’s lap, straddling him in the wheelchair.

Over the music, he thought he could hear people whistling and whooping at them. He ground down against Grayson to the beat of the thumping music that he could feel in his blood and his bones. His teeth clacked against Grayson’s. His nose bumped Grayson’s glasses. He kissed him harder.

“Get a room!” someone shouted, so close to Cam’s ear that he sort of jumped. Grayson pulled his mouth away from Cam’s long enough to shout back, “We live together!”

Cam felt warm, excited shivers go down his neck and his hands. He gripped Grayson’s soft hair in his fingers.

He wasn’t sure, exactly, what you were supposed to do at a club, but this seemed kind of like the right thing.

* * *

Around two a.m., they’d danced, and made out, and Grayson had drunk probably too much, and he was pressing his forehead against Cam’s shoulder in a corner of the club and giggling.

“We should go home,” Cam said into Grayson’s hair.

Grayson giggled harder, grabbed both of Cam’s hands. “You’re gonna sleep in my bed, right?”

“Of course,” Cam said, and he wasn’t just saying it for Grayson’s benefit.

Grayson nodded aggressively. His hand missed the joystick twice before he moved his chair forwards and ran into Cam’s shin so hard tears blossomed in the corners of Cam’s eyes.

“I’m sorry!” Grayson shouted. His eyes were huge behind his glasses.

“It’s fine,” Cam said through gritted teeth. He limped behind Grayson’s chair, grabbed the back of it. “I’ll push you though.”

“I don’t like that,” Grayson said. He leaned his head back so he was looking upside down at Cam behind him.

“You’re gonna kill yourself, _ese_ ,” Cam said. “Or me.”

Grayson squinted at Cam. “I don’t like people pushing my chair, but I think you can. I like you.”

“I like you, too,” Cam said, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t just saying that for Grayson’s benefit, either.

He pushed Grayson’s chair out of the club.

* * *

“I don’t know how to use your car,” Cam said, once they were in front of Grayson’s car.

“Here are the keys,” Grayson said, and dug around in his pocket, and held the keys up to Cam with one wobbly hand. He was leaning forwards in a way that made Cam think he might just topple over. Cam took the keys, pushed Grayson gently back by the shoulders, and Grayson giggled and tried to kiss him again.

“We can call a cab if you can’t drive,” Grayson slurred when Cam pulled away and stared at the car again.

“I can drive,” Cam said defensively. He could—he’d never had his own car, but he could drive. At one point in high school he’d driven his mom’s car whenever he got the chance, before he’d given up on caring about that, too. “I just don’t know how to use yours. You have those hand control things.”

Grayson nodded so many times that Cam wasn’t sure if he was nodding or bobbing his head to some imaginary music. Then he said, “It’s fine. You can drive it like normal, too. Just ignore the things.”

“Okay,” Cam said. He unlocked the driver side door, went to sit down, and then he realized Grayson was still just sitting by the passenger side, looking like he didn’t know what to do.

“Uh… do you need help?” Cam asked. 

Grayson squinted. “Maaaybe.”

Cam came around the side of the car, opened the passenger side door. He stared at Grayson.

“What… what do I do?” he asked.

Grayson looked up at him, squinted some more. Then he shook his head and looked at the car again. “I… I can do it.”

He shot his chair forwards, almost mowed into Cam again before Cam leaped out of the way. Grayson put his hands forward, bracing them on the passenger side seat, and then just sort of toppled forwards, smashed his head into the console between the two seats.

“Holy shit,” Cam said. “Are you okay?”

Grayson murmured something, lifted his head.

“I don’t want… I don’t want you to need to help me,” he said in a slow voice, like he was trying to do his careful-word-choice thing when he was also slurring and drunk.

“It’s okay,” Cam said. “It’s fine, _ese_ , I can help you.”

Grayson shook his head aggressively.

“Here,” Cam said.

He wasn’t particularly strong, and Grayson’s was thin but he was bigger than Cam. Grayson looked so pitiful, though, smaller now that he was drunk and leaning forwards sort of crumpled in on himself. He slipped one arm under Grayson’s legs and another around Grayson’s shoulders and heaved him into the passenger’s seat, only sort of came close to dropping him. Grayson pressed his face into Cam’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered into the fabric of the peacoat.

“It’s fine,” Cam said, and it was. “You’re basically helping me survive, dude, letting me live in your house and eat your food. I should get to help you, too.”

Grayson pulled his face away from Cam’s shoulder as Cam pulled his arms away from around Grayson. He looked up at Cam’s face, his eyes wide but focused on Cam.

“Okay,” he said. “You can help me, too.”


	19. Chapter 19

Cam sat on the edge of the bed. He tossed the peacoat over the foot of the bed and pulled his t-shirt up over his head. Grayson lay beside him, his face buried in his hands, giggling.

“I don’t usually get this drunk,” he said. He was looking at Cam through his fingers.

Cam pulled off the boots and his pants, slid under the covers in just his underwear. “I hope not,” he said.

Grayson shook his head against the pillow. “Really.”

“Are you okay?”

“I just…” He blinked behind his fingers, eyes on Cam. “I just had a really good night.”

Cam grinned. He pressed his forehead to Grayson’s. “Me, too.”

Grayson’s breath was warm and smelled like alcohol, but it was sweet, like the brightly coloured fruity cocktails that Grayson drank. Grayson moved his hands from his face and rested them against Cam’s cheeks, his palms soft and warm. He pressed his mouth to Cam’s, hot and sweet, and the high of the club was still buzzing through Cam’s veins enough that he kissed back, pressed his tongue against Grayson’s lips until he opened his mouth.

They kissed with tongues and teeth, tumbled together under Grayson’s covers, hot and out of breath. They’d both stripped down to their underwear and their skin touched all over, hot and sticky and electric. Cam shivered, running his hands along Grayson’s sides, his back, his fingers exploring the bones of his spine, the bumps and dips of thick surgery scars. Grayson’s hands kept pace with Cam’s, short fingernails running lightly along Cam’s sides.

Cam’s chest was tight with something like adrenaline. He couldn’t catch his breath, but he didn’t know if he wanted to.

Grayson fell back against the pillows of the bed suddenly, pulling his mouth away from Cam’s. He giggled, pulled one hand away from Cam’s side to throw his forearm over his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m drunk. I’m really drunk. I don’t want to…”

Cam let himself fall to his side beside Grayson, spooning him loosely. “That’s okay.”

Grayson lifted his arm and turned his head just enough to meet Cam’s eyes. Grayson’s eyes were grey-blue, a stormy summer sky. In the white light from the Grayson’s bedside lamp, without his thick glasses on, his eyes looked naked.

“I just don’t want to fuck this up,” Grayson said.

Cam couldn’t look at the nakedness of Grayson’s eyes. Instead, he looked at the soft hair that fell across Grayson’s forehead, ruffled and out of place. He ran his thumb up Grayson’s arm. “Fuck what up?” he asked, as if he didn’t know. He didn’t know.

Grayson sucked in a soft breath. He didn’t answer, though. He pressed his forehead into the crook of Cam’s neck, and Cam tightened his arm around Grayson’s side. They fell asleep.

* * *

A few days later, late in the afternoon, Cam sat on Grayson’s couch, his laptop open in his lap.

“Grayson?” Cam said. Grayson had his headphones on, his face washed blue in the light of the computer screen in the dim apartment. “Grayson?” Louder.

Grayson lifted one headphone off his ear and turned his head halfway towards Cam, his eyes still on the computer screen. “Yeah?”

“Yo, can you come look at this?” Cam asked. He tapped his laptop screen, tried not to sound angry.

Grayson took off his headphones and spun his chair around, looking slightly annoyed, the way he usually did when he’d been interrupted in the middle of working. “What?”

“This,” Cam said, tapping the screen again.

“Don’t touch your screen,” Grayson scolded, coming up behind the couch and looking at the screen over Cam’s shoulder. “Yeah, those are your tuition fees. What am I looking at?”

Ignoring Grayson’s scolding, Cam pointed at the paid and owing balances, touching the screen with his index finger.

“Does this mean my classes are costing me a thousand dollars this term?” Cam asked.

“Yeah,” Grayson said, impatient.

“I thought I was only paying, like, four hundred,” Cam said.

“You’re taking two classes, and there’s general student fees,” Grayson said.

“You told me it wouldn’t cost me anything to add another class,” Cam said, and now he did sound angry, he could hear it in his own voice, and he didn’t care.

Grayson didn’t say anything.

Cam looked up at him. “What the fuck, _ese_? Why would you lie to me about that?”

Cam wasn’t sure who he was more mad at—Grayson for lying to him about something so stupid, making him lose money over stupid online classes without even _telling_ him when he was still letting him live and eat for free at his place—or at himself for believing Grayson when he said he could take a class for free.

It had sounded too good to be true when Cam had mentioned how he really wanted to take the Cuban American history class, too, but couldn’t afford it—he’d been too stupid, or too happy, to question it, though.

“What the fuck,” Cam repeated.

“I didn’t lie to you,” Grayson said, slowly, picking his words carefully again, in a way Cam hadn’t heard him speak for a while.

“You told me it was free, _cabron,_ and it’s not. I think that’s called lying.”

“I didn’t say they wouldn’t charge you anything. I said it wouldn’t cost you anything.”

“Stop talking in riddles, Grayson,” Cam snapped.

“I’m not,” Grayson said. “I’m not, I just… I paid for your extra class, okay?”

“What the fuck?” Cam spun around, leaning over the back of the couch to stare at Grayson. “What?”

“What?” Grayson said, like he was confused by Cam’s reaction. “You couldn’t afford the extra class, and you wanted to take it, and I’m not hurting for money. I got into your account and added my credit card information.”

“What?” Cam shook his head. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Grayson shrugged. “I thought you’d say no.”

“Yeah!” Cam said. “ _Claro_. Why would I say yes?”

“I wanted to do something nice for you!”

“Doing shit behind someone’s back isn’t doing something nice!”

“I was paying for you!”

“I’m not a charity case!”

“Seems like you are,” Grayson said. His lips were a thin line. “You’re living in my house and eating my food for free.”

Cam snapped his laptop shut and shot to his feet. “Yeah. Maybe it’s time I leave.”

Grayson stared up at him, eyebrows furrowed angrily. Then his brow softened a little. “No, that’s not what I meant, Cam, you don’t have to leave, just—god, calm down, I’m doing you a favour, and—”

“That’s the problem,” Cam interrupted. “I keep letting you do favours for me. I need to stop.”

“You don’t need to.”

Cam grabbed his backpack from where it had sat untouched by the side of the couch for weeks now. He shoved his laptop into it, started picking up his scattered belongings from the floor and the coffee table and shoving them away.

“Stop, Cam,” Grayson said, coming around the side of the couch.

Cam didn’t say anything.

“ _Stop_ , Cam,” Grayson repeated, and now he sounded mad instead of pleading. Cam kept ignoring him, kept shoving his things into the bag with sort of shaky hands. He didn’t know what he was doing, except that it seemed like what he needed to do, had to do, was supposed to do, right then.

“ _Stop!_ ” Grayson shouted. He wrenched the backpack out of Cam’s hand.

Cam stared at him, shaking. Then he brushed past Grayson without saying anything, grabbed his coat from where it was tossed over the back of the couch, and half-ran to the door. He yanked it open and ran outside, slammed it violently shut behind him, ignored Grayson shouting after him.

He couldn’t breathe once he was outside. He ran.


	20. Chapter 20

He ran until he it was dark and it was snowing, and he was cold and wet, and he was standing outside the bar where Jenny worked, the bar where he’d run into Grayson weeks before—almost a month now.

He couldn’t decide if this was where everything had started to go wrong or to go right. He didn’t want to think about what it would mean if meeting Grayson had made things start to go right. He didn’t want to think about what that meant for how bad things had been before. He definitely didn’t want to think about what that meant for how badly he’d just messed up now.

He’d left everything at Grayson’s, but he had his wallet and his phone in his pockets. He showed his ID to the bored-looking bouncer outside. It was barely evening, and a Tuesday, so the bar was even more depressingly empty than it had been the night he’d run into Grayson. There were about five people sitting sad and alone around the bar, sipping at drinks.

Cam sat down on a bar stool, heavily, leaned his elbows on the counter and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“Cam?”

Cam tensed at the sound of Jenny’s voice. He lifted his head slightly, looked up to see Jenny leaning against the counter in front of him.

“I didn’t know you were working tonight,” he said.

“Are you okay?” Jenny asked.

“Why?” Cam asked. He forced himself to sit up a little straighter. He was dripping wet from the sleety snow. He probably looked like a drowned dog.

“No one’s ever okay when they show up at a bar alone on a Tuesday night,” Jenny said. She nodded her chin at the other people sitting around the bar and leaned forward to whisper loudly at Cam, “Look at them.”

Cam shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Sure,” Jenny said. “You want something?”

“I guess,” Cam said, and he wasn’t sure if he actually did.

Jenny looked at him, waiting. “Okay, what?”

“Uh.” Cam tried to remember what he’d heard other people order at bars before. “Beer?”

She rattled off a list of types of beer that meant nothing to Cam. When he didn’t answer her, she squinted at him and said, “I thought you didn’t drink.”

He shrugged. “Whichever beer is best.”

Jenny stared at him for a second, then grabbed a glass bottle from somewhere under the counter, popped off the metal cap and slid the bottle across the counter.

Cam took a swig and almost spit it back out onto the counter, winced as he swallowed. Jenny laughed. “You seriously don’t drink, do you?”

Cam shook his head.

Jenny leaned her elbows on the counter. “So what happened, man?”

“Nothing,” Cam said. He stared at the bottle. It tasted so much worse than he’d expected, like bubbly tea mixed with vomit.

Jenny shook her head. “Nobody starts drinking for the first time alone on a Tuesday night when nothing’s wrong. I’m smart, Cam. Psychology major and professional bartender. I know when things aren’t okay.”

Cam made a face. “Didn’t you say that last time I talked to you?”

She nodded. “It was true then and it’s true now. Talk.”

Cam swallowed two more mouthfuls of awful beer. He wondered how quickly he could finish the bottle. He wondered how much he needed to drink to get drunk. The thought made his fingers and his toes feel prickly and numb and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Do you remember what it feels like to be hypnotized?” he asked her when he opened his eyes.

She scrunched her nose up and leaned her elbows on the counter. “Finger-in-nose hypnotized or prank-song hypnotized?”

It was weird, somehow, to hear her talk about the prank song. Sometimes he forgot that that had actually happened, and that he had people in his life who’d lived through that, too. Mostly everyone in his life had, really.

“Prank song, I guess,” Cam said. He tapped his fingers against the side of the glass bottle. “Like, when you lose control of yourself. When you’re not yourself.”

Jenny shrugged. “I mean, not really,” she said. “Do you? I think the whole point of that is that it’s mostly just a bunch of scary memory blanks.”

Cam nodded. “Yeah, scary.”

“Why?”

Cam tapped the bottle against the counter a few times, clenched his jaw. “That’s why I don’t drink, I guess,” he said. “I lost control of myself too many times and had too many memory blanks for one lifetime, thanks. Don’t really like the idea of drinking something that’ll do that to me.”

Jenny nodded. “I _thought_ you didn’t drink. Have you ever drunk before?”

“Once,” Cam said. “With Cyrus and Brandy. Grade eleven. I didn’t like it.”

Jenny laughed. “Ooh, grade eleven, what a rebel. How drunk did you get?”

“I couldn’t walk straight and half the night is a blank, so, pretty drunk.”

“Holy shit, yeah,” Jenny said. “You know you can drink without things getting that bad, right?”

“I guess,” Cam said. He didn’t know, though, not really. He knew that being drunk was too much like being hypnotized, and the whole thing made it hard to breathe and made his whole body feel far away from him and distant, and he hated that feeling, too.

Jenny was watching him. He flicked his eyes up to look at her. Her eyebrows were scrunched up together.

“Look, do you really want that?” She pointed at the beer bottle.

“I don’t know,” Cam said. “I’m paying for it.”

“On the house,” Jenny said.

Cam tightened his fist around the bottle. “Why is everyone treating me like a goddamn charity case?”

Jenny’s eyes widened. “Whoa, sorry.”

Cam groaned and let his forehead hit the top of the counter. “Never mind. _Lo siento._ I am a charity case.”

“What’s going on, man? I mean, what’s really going on? Did you really get kicked out of your house?”

“Is everyone gossiping about my life now?”

Jenny shook her head. “Brandy won’t tell us who you’re living with. Said that’s up to you to tell us.”

Cam didn’t know what to think about that. “I’m living with Grayson,” he said.

“For real? Grayson from high school?”

“Do we know any other Graysons? Why is everyone so surprised? You saw me with him like last month.”

Jenny nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I’ve seen him here a lot. With different guys.”

Something in Cam’s stomach twisted, felt weird and heavy. Maybe the beer. He pushed the bottle away from himself.

“Not since the night he was here with you, though,” Jenny said. She leaned forwards, until her face was right up in Cam’s. “Oh my god, are you guys dating?”

“Shut up, no,” Cam said. He leaned away from her.

Jenny shrugged. “I still think you need to get laid.” Her shoulders softened a little. “Or maybe you just need someone to talk to, man. You looked tired in high school, but you look exhausted now.”

Cam didn’t say anything.

“Is living with Grayson good? Is he okay? I know he was kind of an asshole in high school.”

“It’s fine,” Cam said. And mostly it was. It had been good, even, until everything had gone to shit today.

Jenny nodded. “That’s good.”

She grabbed the beer bottle from Cam and poured it out into the sink behind the bar.

“Hey!” Cam said, reaching half-heartedly for the bottle.

“I know you don’t want it,” Jenny said. “Not gonna make you pay for something I poured out, though.”

Cam made a face, and had the childish urge to stick his tongue out at her. And then, maybe because he was a little bit drunk (was that how alcohol worked?) or because he just didn’t care about anything right now, he _did_ stick his tongue out at her.

Jenny laughed. “Oh my god, dude, don’t do that. You trying to make me mad?”

He shrugged. She leaned her elbows on the counter again. “You’ve made everyone else mad, I heard.”

He shrank backwards a little. “Yeah?”

“Or maybe they made you mad. Holger was crying. Lee just looked concerned. Brandy did the thing where she sounds mad but it’s just because she cares.”

Cam ducked his head. “I’ve been an ass,” he said.

“I know that,” Jenny said. “But don’t worry about it, I’m an ass sometimes too. You just gotta talk to them, man.”

Cam shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Oh, come on, why not?”

“I don’t… I don’t get them anymore, you know?” He looked up at her, squinted his eyes. “I don’t have anything in common with anyone anymore. You guys are all doing shit with your lives, yo. I’m barely living. I’m dead weight. I shouldn’t be in anyone’s life.”

“Whoa, man.” Jenny held up her hands. “No one thinks that.”

Cam rapped his knuckles on the countertop. “I do.”

Jenny leaned right up in his face again. “I don’t care what you think. Don’t push your friends away, man. There’s nothing you’ll regret more than that.”

Cam bit his lip.

“You remember me in high school? I hung out with Deuce and Lou all the time, and then I stopped being cursed—never really figured out why, by the way—and I kinda dropped them for a while. It was more fun to run around with Tina and Lee solving mysteries and stuff, and I felt great. I was actually cool, or something. Whatever. Not like Tina and Lee are that cool, but it was nice. And you know what?”

She leaned even closer to Cam, jabbed a finger at him to emphasize her point. “I came this close to having Deuce and Lou hate me forever, and I woulda deserved it, too. I was an ass. But I remembered that I cared about them just in time, and holy shit, almost losing them was the worst. Don’t do that to yourself, man. Friends are important.”

Cam stared at her for a second, watched her huff her breath out in a satisfied way, then let his head thump back down onto the counter. It was cool against his forehead.

“I know,” he groaned into the counter. “God, I know. I don’t… I don’t _want_ them to go away, you know, _chica_? I just want…” He didn’t say anything, because he didn’t know what he wanted.

“You need to talk to them,” Jenny said. “Or at least let them talk to you. They said you haven’t been answering your phone or anything.”

“They probably hate me,” Cam said. He deserved it.

“I think they’re worried about you.”

“That’s worse.”

“I don’t think so,” Jenny said.

Cam rested his cheek against the counter. “Okay.”

“You want some water? Pop?”

Cam lifted his head and looked at Jenny. Then he stood up. “I think I’ll go.”

“Cam…”

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, started heading for the door, dragging his feet. “Sorry ‘bout not drinking the beer.”

“Promise me you’re not just gonna disappear, Cam,” Jenny said.

He made fists in his pockets. “Uhn-kay.”


	21. Chapter 21

It wasn’t that Cam didn’t want to take Jenny’s advice. It was more that he didn’t even know where to start with all the people he’d pushed away. He didn’t know who he could talk to anymore. It seemed wrong to talk to anyone. He didn’t deserve to.

He stopped walking at a bus stop. He sat on the bench and waited for a bus with a number he recognized to show up, shivering in his insufficient coat. It was after ten at night, dark and winter-cold. It was almost mid-December now. Almost Christmas, then. He scrunched up his nose, wiped at it with the back of his hand. He didn’t want to think about Christmas without his mom and sister.

The red light of the number 14 bus appeared at the end of the street. Cam stood up and leaned into the street so the bus would pull up. He got on, swiped the bus pass that he’d gotten to take the bus to work when his mom was using the car. The bus pulled away from the curb as he was heading for the back seats and he stumbled forwards.

He knew he probably wasn’t drunk. He’d had, what, three mouthfuls of beer? Even the idea of being drunk made him feel weird, though. He threw himself down in a seat at the very back of the bus and slouched, hands still in his pockets. A broad, bald man in a suit and two teenagers holding hands were the only other people on the bus. He closed his eyes.

* * *

He almost fell asleep again, almost ended up in the middle of nowhere again, maybe almost had to call Grayson to come pick him up again. Instead, his eyes blinked open in the middle of his half-sleep when the bus pulled up to a stop.

He looked out the window.

The bus stop was the one just down the street from his house. Well, his mom’s house, now.

He stood up before he’d even thought about it, rushed down the bus aisle and leaped out the door as the bus driver was starting to close it.

“Sorry!” he shouted, and then started fast-walking towards his house, like he was trying to outrun his own brain.

* * *

He still had a house key, but it was with his stuff at Grayson’s apartment. He stood on the front steps of his house and stared at the door. He could just leave. He probably _should_ just leave, but instead he stood there.

His mom’s car was in the driveway. There were no lights on in the kitchen and living room, but he couldn’t see the windows in the back, his mom and sister’s rooms. He wondered if they were awake. His sister probably was. She was a teenager now, doing the never-sleeping teenager thing.

Or maybe that was more a Cam thing than a teenager thing. Maybe she’d inherited that from him.

He knocked on the door and got ready to dash around the side of the house if he heard his mom’s slow, heavy footsteps instead of his sister’s fast, light ones.

His sister’s footsteps. He almost dashed away anyways. The door opened.

“Cam?”

“Hey, Angelina.” He shifted his weight, balled and unballed his fists in his pockets. “Hey.”

“Does Mom know you’re here?”

“No.”

She was staring up at him—except she was almost as tall as him, so it wasn’t really looking _up_ —and holding the door open, blinking kind of fast.

“Do you want to come in?”

“ _Si_.”

She stepped out of the doorway. Cam stepped inside. The smell of the house hit him immediately. It got stuck in his throat and made his eyes feel prickly. It was so familiar and so weird, at the same time. The smell of your own house only smelled weird when you’d been away from it for a long time. He hadn’t realized how long he’d been gone until now.

He wanted, suddenly, desperately, to lie down on the couch in the basement and breathe in the smell of his pillows and sleep for a year.

“Mom’s asleep,” Angelina said. She’d closed the door behind them and was standing behind Cam, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Uhn-kay. Good,” Cam said. He turned around to look at Angelina.

“Why are you here?” Angelina said. She cocked her head sideways. “Are you moving back home?”

“No,” Cam said. “I don’t know. I just needed someone to talk to, uhn-kay?”

Angelina’s eyebrows went up. “Me?”

“Why not?” Cam said.

“Don’t you have, like, friends?”

Cam gritted his teeth and breathed in through his nose. “Don’t you have, like, a bedtime?”

She scoffed and rolled her eyes. “What, did you not want me to answer the door?” She was wearing a short jean skirt and striped socks that went up to her knees and a black t-shirt with silver sequins on the front.

“You’re not even wearing pjs, sis,” Cam said.

“So?” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Neither are you.”

She had a plastic purple purse slung over her shoulder, too. Cam narrowed his eyes at her. “Were you sneaking out?”

She took a step backwards, looked offended. “Of course not.”

“What’s with the purse?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me, _hermanita_.”

She pursed her lips and dropped her arms to her sides and balled her hands into fists. “You can’t get mad at me for sneaking out.”

“You’re _thirteen_ , Angelina. You’re my little sister! Of course I can.”

“ _You_ got kicked out of our house, Cam. You’re the bad sibling.”

Cam froze. His hands were fists by his sides, too. They were standing in the middle of the dark living room, glaring at each other, mirror images of each other.

Cam caved first. His shoulders drooped like he didn’t have the energy to hold them up any longer. “I am,” he said. “I’m the worst.”

Angelina softened, then, too, and looked surprised. “What?”

“I’m the bad sibling,” Cam said. “I’m sorry, Angelina. You shouldn’t have a loser for a brother.”

Angelina bit her lip. Her eyebrows were furrowed, like she was holding something in. Then she threw herself at Cam, wrapped her arms tightly around his middle and buried her face in his chest.

“Whoa, _chica_.” He wrapped his arms around her, too, and held her close to him. He loved his family, in some distant familial way, but they didn’t hug a lot. He wasn’t used to this.

“I missed you,” she said, softly, into his chest, like maybe she didn’t want him to hear.

“I missed you too, sis,” he said. He hadn’t realized it was true until now, but it was really, really true.


	22. Chapter 22

They sat on the living room couch. The TV was turned on to a Spanish movie channel their mom liked, the volume super low. The blue glow from the screen was the only light in the room. Angelina was curled up with her head against Cam’s arm, her socked feet tucked up under her.

“Are you going to move back home?” Angelina asked. This time it sounded like a plea instead of an accusation.

“I don’t know,” Cam said.

“You should. If you said sorry to Mom, and got a job, I know she’d let you move back in. She misses you too, you know. She doesn’t say it but I can tell.”

Cam nodded. Somehow he hadn’t thought about his mom and sister very much since he’d left home, and now he couldn’t imagine how they hadn’t been the only thing on his mind. The idea of this house without him inside of it made his throat feel tight and heavy. It seemed so empty.

“I don’t like living with Mom without you,” Angelina continued. “I need backup.”

Cam laughed a little. “I’m sorry, _hermanita_. I shoudn’t’ve left you alone with Mom.”

“No kidding.” Angelina huffed a little. “You’re not here for her to get mad at so she gets twice as mad at me.”

“If you’re sneaking out all the time then she _should_ be getting mad at you,” Cam said.

“ _¡Cállate!_ ” she said, but giggled a little. “I’m not sneaking out _all_ the time.”

“This wasn’t the first time?”

She didn’t say anything, which meant Cam was right.

“Aw, sis, you can’t do that,” Cam said. “Where are you going?”

She still didn’t say anything. Cam looked away from the movie that he was barely watching and down at Angelina. She was staring at her hands.

“Where, Angelina?”

“Nowhere,” she muttered. “Just out with friends. There’s this guy, he’s a tenth grader, he’s in _high school_ , and his friend is dating Sophie and I think he likes me, and me and Soph were going to go to his house tonight…”

Cam opened his mouth to tell her that no fucking _way_ would he ever let her go to a tenth grade boy’s house and what was she _thinking_. And then Angelina looked up at him, and her brown eyes were wide and maybe kind of scared. Cam bit his lip.

“Do you like him?” Cam asked instead.

She looked back down at her hands and shrugged and pressed herself closer to Cam. “I don’t know. Maybe. Kinda. He has nice hair. His name is Albert, though.”

Cam laughed, and Angelina giggled too.

“Albert?” he repeated.

She nodded. “He’s kind of a nerd.”

“You were sneaking out of the house to go hang out at a nerd’s house?”

“He’s a _high schooler_ nerd, though. And he’s kind of cute.”

“Cute nerd. Guess the Martinezes have a type,” Cam said.

Angelina looked up at him again. “Brandy’s not a nerd.”

“Nah. Not Brandy.”

Angelina’s eyes went wide and excited. “Are you dating someone new?”

Cam shrugged. “Not dating, really.”

“Who? Who?”

He wasn’t going to tell her it was Grayson, even if she didn’t know who Grayson was as much as his friends did. “Just some guy.”

Her wide eyes went even wider. “Guy?”

He winced. The word had just slipped out. “Girl?” he offered, but he knew he couldn’t get out of it now.

“You’re dating a guy? Like Lee and Biffy?”

“I guess,” Cam said.

“That’s cool,” Angelina said. She nodded firmly. “I think I would date a girl, maybe.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“As long as it wasn’t a high schooler you were sneaking out to see.”

She scrunched up her nose and looked up at Cam to stick her tongue out at him. “Like you never snuck out of the house in high school.”

Cam remembered all the times she’d caught him sneaking out and held it over his head as blackmail when they were younger. “Yeah, but not when I was thirteen.”

“I’m mature,” she said.

Cam laughed. “You’re still a kid, Angelina. Don’t try to grow up fast. Growing up isn’t fun.”

“Everyone says that,” Angelina said. “I don’t believe it.”

“Hey, when I was in high school, my principal was an evil cyborg and the world almost got taken over by Green Apple Splat,” Cam said. “Scary stuff.”

“That sounds fun to me,” Angelina said.

“Oh yeah?” Cam made his hand into claws and pounced on Angelina, tickling her sides. “Rawwwr, I’m the big bad lizard man, come to take over the world! Are you a big brave high schooler who’s gonna take me down, _chica_?”

Angelina squirmed and laughed, trying to push Cam away. “Stop! We’ll wake up Mom!”

Cam laughed and stopped tickling her. “Uhn-kay. But promise me you’ll stop sneaking out?”

She pursed her lips at him.

“Never mind, I know that won’t work. Promise me you’ll always tell me where you are, though, uhn-kay? Text me.”

She nodded. “Okay. Promise me you’ll come back home, though?”

Cam bit his lip. “I don’t know if I can move back here, sis. I’m twenty now. I think I needed to move out.”

“You have to visit, at least,” she said. “I don’t want you to disappear.”

Cam smiled a little. Then he grabbed his little sister in a tight hug. “Promise. I won’t disappear.”

“ _Gracias,_ bro.”


	23. Chapter 23

Cam slipped out of the house hours later, after he and Angelina had watched two terrible Spanish movies, cuddled up on the couch. Their mom wasn’t awake yet. Cam would come home again sometime. He wasn’t ready to deal with her yet.

He stood outside the house in the pre-dawn darkness. He checked his phone. Five a.m. It was Wednesday now, which meant Angelina had school in a couple hours, but if the Martinezes were good at anything, it was functioning without much sleep.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and started wandering down the street towards the bus stop. Then he remembered that the buses didn’t start running until after six a.m. He looked down at his phone, tapped at the screen with his thumb.

He opened his contacts.

“Hey, Grayson?”

* * *

Grayson’s car pulled up to the bus stop less than half an hour later. Cam pulled open the passenger side door and slid into the seat.

“Hey,” he said. He didn’t look at Grayson.

“Hey,” Grayson said. He pulled the car away from the curb and U-turned back the way he’d come.

They drove in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry,” Cam said finally, looking over at him. “Didn’t mean to wake you up at five a.m., _ese_ , but you said you didn’t mind if I ever called you for help, so…”

Grayson looked over at him and smiled. There were happy wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “It’s fine,” he said. “I meant it. You can call me whenever.”

The knot in the base of Cam’s stomach that he hadn’t even realized was there loosened suddenly. Relief washed over him like a warm shower, and he felt soft and sleepy suddenly. He grinned widely back at Grayson.

“Thanks,” he said. “For real, yo. I was an asshole. I didn’t mean to fight with you.”

Grayson shook his head. “It’s fine. I should have been honest with you, Cam. I really am sorry. And I’m glad you called me, really. I…” He cleared his throat, then smiled tentatively at Cam. “I was worried about you, tonight.”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Cam said. “I went home. Talked to my sister. It was good.”

Grayson nodded. “I remember your sister. Is she still a little terror?”

Cam laughed.

“Sorry,” Grayson said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”

“No,” Cam said. “She is. Kind of. She’s a good kid.”

Grayson nodded. “I always wondered what it would be like to have a sibling.”

“You’re an only kid?” Cam asked. He realized, then, that he didn’t know much at all about Grayson.

Grayson nodded. “When parents have a kid with so many medical issues I think it scares them off from having another kid.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cam said. “Sorry about that, man.”

Grayson shook his head. “It wasn’t all that bad. I was kind of spoiled, actually.” He laughed. “Maybe that’s why I was such a messed up kid.”

“I was pretty messed up, too,” Cam said. “Still am.”

Grayson nodded. “Me, too.”

“Guess that’s why we work, yo,” Cam said.

Grayson looked over at him and smiled again. “Yeah. Maybe.”

They fell into a sort of silence again, but this time it was comfortable. Cam leaned back in his seat, watched the pools of light from the streetlights on the dark street ahead of them.

“I don’t mean to be invasive,” Grayson said after a while. “But you just lived with your mother, right?”

“Yeah,” Cam said. “It’s always been me and my mom and my sister.”

“Always?”

Cam nodded. “My dad left when my mom was pregnant with my sister. I was six. I guess I kind of remember him? He wasn’t home much.”

“That’s rough,” Grayson said.

Cam shrugged. “We moved to Canada right after my sister was born. My mom’s brother moved here a few years before and when he found out my dad was gone, he helped my mom move us up here.”

Grayson nodded. “I remember when you came to school. It was in the middle of the year.”

“You remember?” Cam asked.

“Yeah,” Grayson said. “I thought you were cool. You spoke Spanish and shouted at the teacher.”

Cam laughed. “I _only_ spoke Spanish and I hated the teacher. It was the worst.”

“I thought you were cool,” Grayson repeated.

“Wow,” Cam said. He didn’t really want to say that he hadn’t noticed Grayson much. He hadn’t noticed much of anything.

He’d been too busy trying to survive in a world that was all new and the wrong language and full of people that made him want to cry. Until Lee had stood up for him, and then he’d latched onto Lee pretty much until tenth grade, which was the biggest year of change since that year in grade three.

“I’ve always thought you were cool,” Grayson said.

Cam was leaning his head against the window, looking at Grayson’s profile. “Well, you’re cooler than me now,” he said.

Grayson’s eyebrows went up. “No,” he said, like he was surprised.

“Of course,” Cam said. “You’re a computer hacker and you look like a model.”

Grayson laughed. “I look like a model?”

“Yeah. Have you seen yourself?”

“I’ve looked in one or two mirrors, yes.”

“ _Chico_ , you have those model cheekbones and you’re all muscular and skinny and you wear nice clothes and you go to clubs.”

Grayson laughed harder. “And here I thought I was a nerd in a wheelchair.”

“You’re both,” Cam said. “Nerds are hot now, I think.”

“As long as you think so,” Grayson said.

“Everyone thinks so.”

“I only care if you think so.”

Cam balled his hands into fists, but he was smiling. He wasn’t sure what he was committing to, but this conversation felt like some kind of commitment. “I do think so.”

“Good.”


	24. Chapter 24

They fell back into routine.

Cam texted his sister. He promised her he’d visit again before Christmas, at least. He looked at the texts his friends sent him, and thought about answering them.

He did his History work online and told himself it didn’t matter if Grayson was paying for it. He lay beside Grayson at night and thought about kissing him instead of just curling up in his arms, but he didn’t do anything.

Christmas got closer.

* * *

They lay in Grayson’s bed one night, a few days before Christmas, watching The Walking Dead on Grayson’s iPad. Cam liked zombie shows. Grayson was proud of having been a fan of comics before the show even started.

Grayson leaned his head on Cam’s shoulder.

“Do you like kissing me?” Grayson asked.

A zombie was violently eviscerated onscreen.

“Do I like kissing you?” Cam repeated. He didn’t move.

“Yeah.”

Cam swallowed. “ _Si._ Yes. I guess.”

“That’s good,” Grayson said. He didn’t make any move to kiss Cam, and Cam couldn’t decide if he was happy about that or not. “I like kissing you, too.”

They continued watching the show in silence for another ten minutes or so.

Then, “Are you going to kiss me?” Grayson asked.

“I don’t know,” Cam said.

But then he turned his head a little, and Grayson lifted his head from Cam’s shoulder, and put one hand on the side of Cam’s face, and they pressed their lips together, soft and gentle and tentative. It wasn’t like the hard, spur of the moment kisses he’d shared with Grayson before. There was no teeth-clacking. Grayson’s glasses pressed into Cam’s face, but only gently.

Grayson leaned back against his pillows, gently pulling Cam on top of him. The iPad slid off his lap onto the side of the bed. Grayson’s tongue flicked out to brush Cam’s lips while a zombie moaned and someone screamed.

Cam closed his eyes and pressed his body into Grayson’s.

They kissed, softly, and the episode on the iPad ended, and then the only sounds in the apartment were Grayson’s soft breaths against Cam’s face and the rustling of the blankets draped over them. Grayson ran his hands down Cam’s back, and rested them low on his hips.

“You’re so cool, you know that, right?” Grayson whispered against Cam’s cheek. Cam buried his face in the pillow beside Grayson, too red-faced to look at him. Grayson breathed into the shell of Cam’s ear, nipped at his earlobe. “And so hot. I’ve always liked you. I’ve wanted to do this for years. To do this right.”

Grayson’s movements were so slow, so deliberate, it was almost painful. Cam lifted his face from the pillow and pressed his lips to Grayson’s, still slower and sweeter than anything they’d shared before. He didn’t say anything.

Grayson’s hands dipped lower, brushing the band of Cam’s sweatpants. Cam tensed at Grayson’s soft touch, bit Grayson’s lip harder than he meant to.

“Can I?” Grayson asked.

Cam made a _mmm_ sound against Grayson’s mouth. This was different, somehow, from the last time. Softer and less urgent. Cam had time to think, and he didn’t know what to think.

“Lying in this bed with you and not touching you since you moved in has been so hard,” Grayson said, his touch still so soft and slow and gentle. “You’re fucking incredible, Cam.”

The words set Cam’s whole body on fire. “So are you,” Cam whispered against Grayson’s mouth.

He felt Grayson smile, and he let go, let himself get lost—in this moment, in Grayson, in everything.

* * *

Later, Cam woke up with a start, sat straight up in bed, trying to catch his breath, like he’d just had a nightmare that was already escaping him.

He looked down at Grayson, lying beside him, his mouth gently half-open. His hair was all splayed out around his head on the pillow, soft and brown.

Cam slid out of bed as softly and quietly as he could. He slid off his sweatpants and pulled on a pair of jeans that he’d left thrown over the back of the couch. He threw his old red coat on over his holey, long-sleeved sweater and pulled his shoes on.

He knew the trick to get the squeaky door handle open now. He opened the door, soft and quiet, and slipped out of the apartment.

Grayson stayed asleep.


	25. Chapter 25

This time, Cam was going to get drunk. And he wasn’t going to go anywhere that he might run into Jenny, because he didn’t need anyone to talk him out of it this time.

There was a liquor store next to the grocery store down the street from Grayson’s apartment. Cam walked with his hands in his pockets, jiggling his wallet like he could weigh how much money he had left in there. Not much. He wondered how much alcohol he could buy without having to use his debit card and dip into his basically non-existent savings.

He stepped into the liquor store and shivered. Why did they have air conditioning on in December?

It was late morning, and the place had only opened half an hour ago. There was no one inside except a skinny lady with grey hair sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper. She glanced up when Cam walked in, and then back down at her newspaper.

Cam had never been inside a liquor store before. He wasn’t sure what he had expected, but maybe something seedier, something more bar-like. Instead it was more like a big, boring grocery store that sold nothing but cans and glass bottles, like the one drink aisle from the grocery store next door had been copy-pasted twenty times and filled up the entire space.

He went to the aisle as far away from the grey-haired cashier as he could get, so he could be confused without her watching him. He ran his fingers along the brown and green bottles that lined the shelves. He didn’t even know what kind of alcohol this was. Most of the names weren’t even English, or Spanish. Maybe French? What kind of alcohol was French? Was this wine? They didn’t look like wine bottles.

He found a bottle of tequila, which was at least a type of alcohol he recognized. It was twenty dollars, and the price made him wince, but it was a pretty big bottle. He weighed it in his hands. He wondered how much he would need to get drunk. He wondered if it would taste as bad as beer.

He took it to the front of the store, and his hands only shook a little bit as he showed the lady his ID. She looked a little suspicious, or maybe he just felt suspicious, but she let him buy it, and put the glass bottle in a brown paper bag, which Cam didn’t know was something stores actually did. He felt like he was doing something wrong, walking out of the store with the brown bag of alcohol.

He walked to A. Nigma.

* * *

He knew he probably shouldn’t get drunk at a high school, but somehow it felt like the place to do it. People got drunk in high school, and he’d only done that once. It felt like he’d missed out on something important.

Some part of Cam felt like he’d missed out on a lot, and he wasn’t even sure what, or when.

He walked across the snow-covered football field, towards the big cluster of trees at the back of the schoolyard. He knew the potheads smoked weed there when they skipped classes. Cyrus had, too, sometimes, and he’d invited Cam and Brandy along, but they’d never been into that. Brandy hadn’t, anyways, and Cam had always thought Brandy was pretty smart.

But school was closed for the holidays, so there was no one smoking between the trees today. He found a thick tree with low branches and sat down on the cold, frosty dirt at its base. The branches were bare and looked like gnarled fingers. It was cold, and as soon as Cam wasn’t walking, he felt shivery. He opened the bottle and put it to his lips. He got a whiff of the smell on the way to his mouth and shuddered, almost couldn’t make himself drink it. It smelled like a cleaning product, like something that wasn’t meant to go anywhere near his mouth.

He tipped the bottle back, though, and swallowed a huge mouthful.

Or tried to, anyways. The stuff _burned_. He choked, and it sprayed out his nose and out between his lips. He leaned forwards, coughing and spitting. His mouth and his nose felt like fire and his stomach was queasy. He had to cough for a minute to catch his breath, then wiped his nose and mouth with the back of his sleeve. There was tequila all over his jacket now.

He looked at the bottle in his hand. How could anyone drink this? It tasted awful and hurt. He considered not drinking it. But he’d spent twenty dollars on it. And he didn’t know how else he was going to pretend he hadn’t just had the most confusing sex of his life. You were supposed to get drunk after having a night you didn’t know how to feel about, right? Maybe if Cam did things the way other people did, maybe then he’d be able to feel normal.

He put the bottle to his lips again and took a tiny sip this time. It tasted _awful_ , worse than beer in a completely different way, like hot poison kitchen cleaner instead of like vomit tea, but he managed to swallow it this time. He took more tiny sips, until his mouth started to feel numb, and it was easier to drink. He graduated to bigger gulps, and his throat only kind of hurt.

He’d drunk about a third of the bottle when it occurred to him that maybe that was a lot of alcohol. He held the bottle out and looked at what was left in it, and tried to decide if he was drunk. He didn’t really feel drunk, not really. His head kind of felt the way it felt when he had a headache, except it didn’t hurt. He squinted. He took another big swallow of the alcohol, except his hand felt far away from his mouth.

Maybe he was drunk.

He looked up at the tree in front of him, and then at the tree next to it, and it was like watching a show that wasn’t loaded properly, everything in slow motion and skipping the in-between frames. He blinked and the darkness of each blink seemed to last too long. He put the bottle down, and then accidentally knocked it over.

“ _Mierda_ ,” he said, watching the brown liquid leaking out of the bottle and into the dirty, hard-packed snow. He didn’t think to pick up the bottle until it was mostly empty. He set it upright and then tried to get to his feet.

He tripped forwards and landed on his hands and his knees, feeling slow and dizzy.

He was definitely drunk.

He tried to stand up, to lean back against the tree, but he couldn’t stand up right. He was dizzy. His breath was caught somewhere in the middle of his throat and he couldn’t breathe right.

His whole body went cold and shivery, panic running down the middle of his spine and down the backs of his knees. He leaned forwards until his forehead was touching the cool snow and tried to make himself throw up. That’s how you got rid of alcohol in your stomach, right? He couldn’t make himself throw up. His arms were shaky.

“ _Mierda._ Shit. Fuck,” he muttered to himself. His mouth felt slow and slurred. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, could hear it in his ears and his wrists and his palms. His eyes were closed and he didn’t remember closing them.

He felt like he was going to die.

He started to cry.

“Hey, whoa, dude, are you okay?”

His head snapped up at the sound of someone’s voice. Everything was still all slow-motion and bad and weird. Some skinny kid with long brown hair and a beanie and big eyes was looking down at him.

Cam sat up. He still couldn’t breathe.

“I’m okay,” he said. Did he sound as slurred as he thought he did?

“You don’t look okay, man,” the kid said. “Did you have a bad trip or something?”

Cam shook his head, which made the weird not-headache worse. Everything was kind of spinning, except not.

He saw the kid look down at the tequila bottle. “You drunk?” the kid asked.

Cam nodded. His heart was so loud in his ears. “I need… I need to go,” Cam said, and he didn’t know where he was going, but he didn’t like it here with all these trees, and everything felt wrong, and he didn’t know who this kid was. Probably a high schooler. One of the potheads, sneaking into school during the holidays. He was skinny and probably younger than Cam and Cam was scared of him.

“Okay,” the kid said. “You need help?”

“No,” Cam said, and tried to stand up again, and felt too dizzy and sort of fell on his hands and knees again.

The kid came over to Cam and put his arms under Cam’s armpits. Cam froze. The kid pulled Cam to his feet, grunting. Cam swayed away from the kid.

“Where are you going?” the kid asked.

“I’m okay,” Cam said. He was shaking, all over, too hard to be shivering.

“Okay,” the kid said. He didn’t sound convinced. Cam stumbled out of the forest. He was halfway across the football field, stumbling and still shaking too hard, when he realized he’d left the tequila bottle in the forest.

“Hope you like it!” Cam shouted, at the kid maybe, except he was too far for the kid to hear him. His voice sounded small in the quiet winter silence of the empty football field. “Cost me twenty bucks!”


	26. Chapter 26

He went to Cyrus’s place.

It wasn’t so much that he decided to go to Cyrus’s, but more that he stumbled onto the first bus that pulled up to the stop outside A. Nigma and realized, as he pressed his face against the cold glass of the window and felt his whole body shaking to a jittery beat, that the bus was headed towards Cyrus’s.

He took the trip by instinct. Before he’d stopped talking to Cyrus, before he’d almost stopped existing entirely, Cam had taken the bus to the DoD’s apartment almost daily. Even though his brain was pounding and screaming to get out of his head, even though he couldn’t blink without throwing the world into spinning slow motion, it wasn’t hard for Cam to end up on the sidewalk outside the Vietnamese grocery store with the black DoD cloth in the upstairs window.

The rickety iron staircase looked like a nightmare. It was endlessly tall and swimming in Cam’s line of sight. He couldn’t tell if it was actually swaying like a suspension bridge or if his whole world was swaying.

His palms were so sweaty they slipped from the cold railing when he tried to hold on. His skull tingled with the sting of a thousand bees and he was definitely, definitely dying.

And then he was somehow at the top of the stairs, swaying so violently he thought he might just tip right over into the alley below. For only half a second, he wondered if he would mind falling to the bone-shattering concrete. Then his heart leaped up into his throat and he pounded on the door, out of breath with all the adrenaline terror of running from hazmats and certain doom in high school.

Cyrus opened the door. Cam almost tumbled into him, and the apartment door slammed shut behind him.

“Whoa. Cam. Man. Are you okay?”

Cam stared up at Cyrus. His hair was messy, wild and knotted. He was wearing a band shirt that Cam didn’t recognize and boxers and he seemed fuzzy around the edges. Cam wanted to throw up.

“No,” he said.

Cyrus touched Cam’s shoulder, confused and gentle. Cam was sure he could feel the heat of Cyrus’s palm through his sweater. It was too hot. Everything was too much. He still couldn’t breathe.

“Cam, dude, it’s cool, deep breaths. Are you having a panic attack?”

Cam squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t know.”

“Have you ever had a panic attack before?”

Cam shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think… I can’t breathe.”

“Oh man. Okay, dude, just…” Cyrus tried to steer Cam into the apartment, towards the couch, but Cam collapsed against the door and slid to the floor. His eyes were still closed. He felt Cyrus crouch beside him.

“You just have to breathe through it,” Cyrus said, his voice soft and musical and far away. It sounded a little like he was talking from underwater. Cam’s blood pounded loud and warped in his ears. “I promise you’re not dying.”

Cam opened his eyes in a squint. The dim kitchen light was like a halo framing Cyrus’s wild hair.

“Feel like I’m dying,” Cam whispered. He couldn’t speak around the tightness in his chest. “How’d you know?” He couldn’t keep his eyes open.

“Panic attacks do that,” Cyrus said.

Cam tried to remember if Cyrus had ever mentioned panic attacks before. He wanted to ask. Instead, he said, “I spent twenty bucks on tequila.”

“Holy shit. Are you drunk?” Cyrus asked.

Cam bobbed his head. He still couldn’t breathe, but somehow everything was starting to feel heavy and slow instead of a panicked fast-forward. He realized Cyrus was holding both of his hands. The grounding weight of another person’s body helped make him feel more real.

“It’s, like, noon. What kind of party did I miss?” Cyrus said.

Cam didn’t answer. His throat was too tight and his tongue was too thick.

“Talking helps,” Cyrus said. He shook Cam’s hands, not hard, just to get his attention. “Talk through it.”

“I hate drinking,” Cam said. “It... It trips me out.” His words sounded far away from himself. He couldn’t tell how much of it was being drunk and how much was the panic attack.

“I know, dude. I was there the first time you got drunk. You wigged the fuck out.”

“Yeah,” Cam said. He leaned towards Cyrus, and Cyrus let Cam bump his head against his chest. Cam could hear Cyrus’s heartbeat, so much slower and more even-tempoed than Cam’s. He tried to match his breaths to Cyrus’s. “Yeah. You were there.”

Cyrus let Cam breathe for what was maybe minutes or maybe more. Then he said, “So. You gonna tell me why you were getting plastered with tequila on a Thursday morning?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” Cam slurred. His breaths were almost even with Cyrus’s. He thought maybe the panic attack was going away. He felt heavy and fuzzy, and his fingers and toes were numb, but he thought that might just be the alcohol.

He lifted his head just enough to look up at Cyrus’s face, the curve of his nose and the dark brown of his round eyes. Cam blinked against the heaviness in his own eyes, said, “We should lie down.”

“I’ve got a bed and everything,” Cyrus said, and pulled Cam to his feet. Cam very nearly collapsed against the door again. He had to lean heavily against Cyrus’s shoulder as they stumbled across the apartment.

“You really are drunk,” Cyrus said. “How’d you even get here?”

Cam hummed into Cyrus’s shoulder. He blinked his eyes half-open as they passed the couch, and he realized Skeeter was sprawled out on it, his long hair falling into his open, drooling mouth. The bright green cast was gone from his arm, and Cam tried to remember how long it had been since he’d been here. He couldn’t remember. Time had started to bleed in strange ways since Cam had move in with Grayson.

His heart flopped over sideways at the thought of Grayson, and why he was drunk, and why he was here.

He wasn’t sure why he was here, really, but maybe that was the other half of what you were supposed to do when you had confusing sex and didn’t want to think about what it meant. You got drunk, and then you had more confusing sex, because at that point, what was there to lose?

As Cyrus pushed the door into the smaller of the two bedrooms, his arm wrapped around Cam’s shoulders, Cam tilted his head up and he planted a kiss, sloppy and awkward, on Cyrus’s jaw. Cyrus jerked his head down to meet Cam’s eyes. His mouth quirked into a half smile and he pressed his forehead to Cam’s. Cam tried to kiss him, but Cyrus titled his head away slightly.

“Is this a booty call, Cam Martinez?”

“Maybe,” Cam said in a voice that was far away from his ears and far away from his body.

“Didn’t see that coming, man. Not to say I’m not flattered, but you were just having a panic attack out there. Don’t wanna fuck you up, dude.”

Cam tried to kiss Cyrus again. He didn’t want to keep talking. He wanted to have sex without talking and without thinking, and then he could sneak out and regret it later. He didn’t want to regret it yet.

“C’mon.” Cyrus pulled Cam onto the bed with him. He pressed Cam’s shoulders down gently so Cam was lying flat on his back. He unzipped Cam’s hoodie and pulled it off his shoulders. Cam had forgotten until that moment that he’d spilled tequila down the front of his jacket. The smell of the alcohol on his clothes suddenly seemed really strong.

He just blinked, though, and watched Cyrus leaning above him, watched him tug the hoodie away and toss it to the bedroom floor. Then Cyrus met Cam’s eyes and tilted his head, but didn’t say anything. He wasn’t straddling Cam, but he had his arms braced on either side of Cam’s head.

“You should kiss me,” Cam said, and Cyrus did.

Cyrus’s kiss was different from Grayson’s. His face was scruffier, his lips more chapped. He kissed slower, lazier than Grayson did. He used more tongue, but he felt less desperate. They kissed for a long moment that sank into a blurry kind of limbo in Cam’s hazy brain. He couldn’t tell how long they’d been kissing. He couldn’t even tell if he was still kissing Cyrus back. Had he fallen asleep for a second?

Cyrus pulled away. Cam felt him pull back and realized that his eyes were still closed. He struggled to open them, and by the time he did, Cyrus had collapsed on the bed next to Cam, close but not quite touching him. Cam rolled his heavy head until he could look at Cyrus.

“Why are you here, dude?” Cyrus asked.

“We should have sex,” Cam said. The words felt heavy and sticky in his mouth. He didn’t want to see Cyrus’s reaction, so he closed his eyes again. He leaned towards Cyrus and hoped he would kiss him and wouldn’t ask question.

Cyrus didn’t kiss him. Cam opened his eyes again, just a little.

It was harder to trust his own eyes when he was drunk, but he was pretty sure Cyrus looked sad. Concerned, maybe. Forlorn. Cam couldn’t remember where he’d first heard that word. He almost drifted off again, letting his brain take that tangent.

Then Cyrus said, “You know how many times I wanted to kiss you in high school?”

Cam blinked until he could focus on Cyrus again. “For real?”

“Yeah, for real. Like, all the time, except you were dating Brandy and I cared too much about both of you to fuck that up.”

“Did everyone wanna make out with me in high school?” Cam asked around the heaviness in his mouth.

Cyrus blinked. “Who else?”

“Grayson.”

“Grayson I-blackmail-people-for-fun Grayson?”

“Yeah. That one. He doesn’t blackmail people anymore, I don’t think. _Probablemente_. _No lo sé._ ”

“You been talking to Grayson?”

“I been living with Grayson.”

Cyrus pushed himself up on his elbow so he was staring down at Cam again. “That’s the friend you’ve been living with? You trust that asshole?”

“ _No lo sé_ ,” Cam said again. He buried his face in his hands and added, “We’ve had sex.”

He felt Cyrus sit up next to him in the bed but he didn’t look out from behind his fingers.

“Wait, dude, are you dating Grayson the dick from high school?”

“I don’t think we’re dating,” Cam said. His words were muffled by his hands and he kind of hoped Cyrus couldn’t hear him.

“Please tell me you didn’t come here to make Grayson jealous, Cam.”

Cam shook his head so hard that he could feel it in his brain. “It’s not about Grayson.” And he wasn’t lying. He didn’t think he was lying.

“What’s it about, Cam? Are you… are you okay?”

Cam pulled his hands away from his face and slammed them down so hard on the bed that he felt the mattress shudder.

“No, fuck, okay, _ese_?” He was staring at the ceiling and not at Cyrus. He didn’t think he was really talking to Cyrus, either. Not to Cyrus in particular. “I’m not okay, okay? _¿Bueno?_ You’re all right, you all got me, Cam’s fucked up! Cam failed at being a person! No one is surprised! _Cam hizo todo mal. Nadie se sorprende._ ”

“Dude…” Cyrus touched Cam’s shoulder. Cam rolled onto his side, away from him.

“I’m trying,” Cam said to the wall. “I’m doing all the things people do. Having a job and hooking up with people and getting drunk. What am I doing wrong?”

“People do that stuff ‘cause it makes them happy, dude,” Cyrus said. “Well, maybe not the job thing, ‘less you’re lucky. You happy?”

“Dunno,” Cam said. “Can’t remember.”

“Can’t remember what it’s like to be happy?” Cyrus’s voice was almost a whisper. Cam couldn’t tell if he sounded scared or not.

“Maybe. Something like that,” Cam said.

Cryus lay down very gently next to Cam. He put one long, warm arm around Cam’s middle and held him tightly. The bed, the room, the boy at his back. It all smelled so soft and familiar and so much like high school, and Cam didn’t realize he was crying until his face was all wet.

“Sorry about your pillow,” Cam muttered. “I’m getting it all wet.”

“That’s cool,” Cyrus said.

“Can we sleep, maybe?” Cam said. He was already asleep, almost. He wasn’t sure if he said the words out loud or not. He wasn’t sure if Cyrus answered.


	27. Chapter 27

Cam woke up alone.

He couldn’t tell what time it was. There was no clock on the nightstand, no windows in the tiny bedroom, and the door was shut. His head was pounding. He rolled onto his back in the empty bed and nausea rolled over him. He wasn’t sure if he should be scrambling for the bathroom or staying perfectly still.

He chose staying perfectly still.

Slowly, the world around him came into a little bit of focus. There was a glass of water on the nightstand next to him, and when the nausea faded enough that he was sure he wasn’t going to vomit all over Cyrus’s bed, he rolled over and reached for it. There was a note, scrawled on the back of a receipt in Cyrus’s messy handwriting, that said _Drink some water, Cam._

Cam drank the whole glass in one go, and then felt even more sick. He buried his face in the pillow and tried to fall back asleep.

The bed smelled so painfully of Cyrus and of high school and of memories and of regret. Cam groaned into the pillow. He hadn’t even had sex with Cyrus—he’d been _very_ drunk, but he remembered enough to know that he hadn’t actually hooked up with Cyrus. Probably.

He still regretted everything.

The bedroom door wasn’t nearly thick enough to block out any of the noises in the rest of the apartment. Voices and laughter and TV crackling and strumming guitar. The fact that the DoD was awake didn’t really tell Cam anything. It could be mid-afternoon or midnight.

He tried to listen for Cyrus’s voice, tried to hear what Cyrus was saying. Tried to hear if Cyrus was saying anything about him. But everything was fuzzy and indistinct through the general chatter of the apartment. Cam felt fuzzy and indistinct as a person. And sick.

He wondered how long he could hide away in Cyrus’s room. Maybe he could stay hidden forever. His life felt like a series of hiding places, lately.

Cam’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He jumped, and his whole body went rigid. He didn’t want to touch the phone, didn’t want to leave the hiding place of his own head yet. It buzzed again.

Before he could decide whether he was going to reach for it or not, he heard the bedroom door ease open. He buried his face deeper in the pillow and tried to pretend he was asleep.

“You awake?” Cyrus asked, kind of softly. And then someone smashed something in the kitchen and the whole apartment erupted into shouts and there was no way Cam could pretend to sleep through that.

Cam rolled onto his back and squinted at Cyrus. “Am I dying now?”

Cyrus leaned against the doorjamb and gave Cam a half-grin. He was wearing black skinny jeans and his eternal top hat and no shirt. Cam’s heart squeezed in his chest for at least half a dozen reasons.

“You’re just hung over,” Cyrus said. He held out his arm like an invitation, even though he was too far away for Cam to grab his hand. “You want to eat something? Coffee? Advil?”

“No,” Cam said. The thought of putting anything in his mouth was nauseating. He sat up, though, and dragged himself to the edge of the bed, because he suddenly felt weird about being a guest in Cyrus’s house. In Cyrus’s bed.

Cyrus stepped into the room and clicked the door shut, only slightly drowning out whatever chaos was happening in the kitchen. He sat down on the foot of the bed, and the mattress bounced enough to make Cam’s stomach flip over. He gripped the blankets, white-knuckled. Being hung over was a lot less dramatic than being drunk, but also somehow worse.

“Yo, I should go, I guess,” Cam muttered. His discarded, tequila-stained hoodie was piled on the floor. He thought about picking it up. He didn’t like the idea of leaning over when his stomach was threatening to crawl out his throat.

“Where?” Cyrus asked. “Home to Grayson?”

Cam winced. Cyrus was right, which made his words worse. He hadn’t figured things out with Grayson yet, hadn’t figured out anything. His phone buzzed in his pocket again.

Cyrus nodded at the sound. “That him?”

“Don’t know,” Cam said, but it probably was. He realized that he hadn’t told Grayson where he was, that he’d just disappeared, and of course Grayson would be concerned.

His heart stuttered in his chest at the thought of Grayson worrying about him, but it seemed like a colossal effort to reach for his phone, to come up with an answer for Grayson’s worried texts.

Cyrus threw himself down on the bed, arms splayed out to the sides. Cam looked over his shoulder meet his eyes.

“You gonna tell me why you showed up here drunk and horny?” Cyrus asked.

Cam made a face, felt weird about the word horny. “I don’t know, _ese_. I was confused. Am confused.”

“About Grayson?”

“About everything.” Cam looked down at his hands, fists in his lap, because looking Cyrus in the eyes was making his head ache even more than it already did. “But yeah, about Grayson, I guess.”

“So like, I hate the guy, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Cam. I trust you, man. Is he an okay dude now?”

Cam felt rather than saw Cyrus roll onto his side. Cyrus punched Cam gently in the shoulder, a reassuring sort of tap.

“’Cause if he’s hurting you or anything, man,” Cyrus said, his voice low and rough. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

Cyrus words were so real, so real and concerned and tangible, and Cam suddenly couldn’t breathe around the lump in his throat. He’d forgotten what it was like to have friends who had his back, strong and steady and caring, an understanding so strong that it didn’t have to be spoken to always be there. He’d forgotten what it was like to have their backs, too.

Cam reached over and returned the punch, tapped his fist against Cyrus’s bicep.

“ _Gracias_ , bro,” he said. “I know you would. But it’s cool. He’s cool. He’s really trying.” Cam paused and tapped his fists against his thighs. “He’s nicer to me than I deserve, yo.”

Cyrus sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sat down next to Cam and bumped their shoulders together. “Then what happened, man? What was last night?”

Cam buried his face in his hands, but he bumped Cyrus’s shoulder back. He tried to think around the pounding headache. What was last night? “It’s like…” He let his hands muffle his words, like maybe they meant less if Cyrus couldn’t hear him as well. “I gotta walk such a fine line with him. The idea of… I dunno, like, having sex, yo… When it’s soft, and nice, not fast and… and desperate. When it’s nice, it freaks me out.”

Cyrus whistled under his breath. “You’re fucked, man.”

Cam groaned.

“Is it ’cause he’s a dude?”

Cam bounced his leg up and down, tapping Cyrus’s bedroom floor with his foot manically. Then the jostling made his stomach roil again, so he stopped. He tried to think about Grayson being a guy, about how he’d sort of just stumbled into falling for Grayson. He tried to remember if he’d ever felt that way about a guy before.

He tried to remember how he’d felt about Brandy. His feelings for Brandy hadn’t been the same as his feelings for Grayson. They were… less confusing, at least at first. He liked her, and she liked him, and they fought a lot, but in a way that meant they liked each other.

And there’d been drama, and the whole Brandy-and-Lee thing, and ups and downs, but Cam had never questioned if he _actually_ liked Brandy, or what that meant. It had made sense, and he liked Brandy, and he liked girls, so he didn’t have to think about whether or not he liked boys.

He peeked at Cyrus through his fingers. Cyrus’s bare chest was dark and smooth and toned, black ink roses snaking over his right pec and shoulder. His hair fell in messy, soft waves around his face, his shoulders, and he was pretty. He was beautiful, and he made Cam feel kind of sweaty, kind of nervous, kind of definitely turned on, and it didn’t seem like a new feeling, not really.

He’d always known that Cyrus was pretty. He’d always wanted to spend time with Cyrus, maybe more than other people. When he and Brandy and Cyrus had been inseparable, the hours he’d spent by Cyrus’s side were just as soft and glowing and magical as the ones he’d spent with Brandy.

So maybe, maybe wanting to kiss a boy wasn’t new. And maybe wanting to do more than just kiss a boy wasn’t new either, and maybe Cam had always known that. He could hear his own voice, five years younger, parading around like an insecure peacock crowing about _chiquitas_ , pretty girls and cheerleaders.

And maybe he’d known even then, or figured it out since then, that he’d been trying too hard to remind everyone (to remind himself) that he liked girls with their soft lips and pretty hair.

He just liked boys with their soft lips and their pretty hair, too.

“No,” Cam said, finally, closing his eyes so he wasn’t looking at Cyrus’s pretty hair anymore. “Don’t think it’s because he’s a boy.”

“That’s cool,” Cyrus said. “High school me woulda been pretty excited about you kissing boys.”

Cam laughed into his hands. “Didn’t know you kissed boys.”

“I kiss everyone.” He leaned in and kissed the side of Cam’s head, and Cam laughed again.

“You dating anyone?” Cam asked, pulling his fingers away from his face.

Cyrus shook his head. “I’m not into that. Not for right now, anyways. Got a few casual friends. Living fast and loose, man. I’m a rock star.” He winked.

“How do you do that, _ese_? How do you make sex not mean anything?”

“Whoa, bro, didn’t say it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not an asshole.” Cyrus held up his hands defensively. “I just make sure that whoever I’m doing the do with is on the same page as me. If we’re both just having fun, it’s just fun. Respect each other, do the dirty, watch some bad TV, call it a night.”

It sounded so simple like that. Like maybe it could just be fun, and not mean much at all. It seemed so much heavier to Cam, though.

“Maybe Grayson and I aren’t on the same page, then.”

Cyrus nodded, understanding, top hat slipping slightly sideways on his head. “He want more than you wanna give?”

Cam bit his lip, almost hard enough to draw blood before he opened his mouth. He stared at the bedroom wall, plastered with torn and faded posters, instead of at Cyrus. “Don’t think I deserve what he wants to give me.”

“Cam…” Cyrus’s voice was soft, concerned, and it made Cam ache inside.

“I’m not good, Cyrus,” Cam said. He tried to make himself sound convincing, strong, final. He sounded soft and weak even to his own ears, though, still too sick from the hangover. “I’m lazy and angry and broken.”

“You’re not, Cam, dude.” Cyrus sounded insistent, all the convincing strength in his words that Cam wanted in his. “No one thinks that.”

“That’s ‘cause I left everyone before they could realize it.”

“Maybe you gotta stop leaving people,” Cyrus said. He reached for Cam’s hand and threaded their fingers together loosely. “I missed you, dude.”

The weight on Cam’s chest was suffocating. “I missed you, too,” he said, his voice small, and it was true.

He still didn’t think he deserved Cyrus. He didn’t deserve any of the people who were trying to keep themselves tangled up in Cam’s fraying life.

He let himself appreciate it, though, at least for a moment.

The bedroom door slammed open, and Rud stuck his head inside, hair falling across his face in a wild tangle under his black beanie. “Cyrus, dude! We’re gonna be fuckin’ late if you don’t get your ass out to the van right now. Oh hey, Cam, glad you didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.”

Before Cam could say anything, Rud disappeared back into the crashing chaos in the rest of the apartment.

“Late?” Cam asked as Cyrus stood up, fingers still tangled with Cam’s.

“Yeah, we got a show tonight.” He grinned wide suddenly, staring down at Cam from under the brim of his hat. “You gotta come to the show, man.”

Cam’s head spiked with pain at the idea of being in a loud, crowded bar listening to the DoD’s screeching music. “My head, bro…”

Cyrus pouted, all adorable high school puppy. “You haven’t been to one of our shows in years, dude.” He shook Cam’s hand excitedly. “And I’m gonna play your song.”

Cam’s heart flipped over. Cyrus squeezed his hand, eyes wide and excited.

“Uhn-kay,” he said. “I’ll come.” As though there was any way he could have said no.


	28. Chapter 28

Cyrus gave Cam some Advil and a bottle of water, and Cam stood leaning against the chilly brick wall of the Vietnamese grocery store, nursing his water as he watched the DoD rush up and down the rickety metal stairs, loading instruments and gear into their rusty old van.

The Advil helped dull his headache, but his stomach still roiled as he climbed into the backseat of the van, squished up between Rud and an amp that was buckled into the seat like a toddler.

“Glad you’re coming with, man!” Rud said, ruffling Cam’s hair with one huge hand.

Cam winced, then looked up at Rud and gave him a half-hearted grin. “Yeah, _ese_ ,” he said. “You guys do this a lot?”

“At least once a month!” Skeeter said, leaning around Rud to look at Cam. “We were doing weekly shows at this one place downtown in the summer.”

“That was a good time,” Cyrus said from the passenger seat, glancing back to look at Cam as Goob pulled the van out of its narrow parking space beside the grocery store. “Good crowds _and_ they paid well.”

“Hell, yeah,” Skeeter agreed, and then he started talking about some girl he’d met at one of their summer shows.

Cam let their chatter wash over him. The easy familiarity made him feel almost as sick as the hangover still roiling around inside him. He leaned against the amp beside him and fished his phone out of his pocket, trying to look at ease.

He regretted pulling out his phone as soon as he saw the notifications filling up his lock screen. Twenty texts from Grayson, and three missed calls. He winced, shoved his phone back in his pocket.

When he looked up, Cyrus was watching him over the back of the passenger seat.

“Grayson?” Cyrus asked, nodding at Cam.

Cam considered lying, then shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll call him later.”

“Grayson? High school Grayson?” Goob asked from the driver’s seat, eyes flicking up to glance at Cam in the rear-view mirror.

Cam almost laughed. Did he know _anyone_ who didn’t know exactly who Grayson was?

“Yeah,” Cam said. “High school Grayson.”

“Invite him to the show!” Rud said, elbowing Cam a little harder than was necessary. “Haven’t seen that guy in forever!”

“No, it’s fine,” Cam said quickly, a spike of something like panic coursing through him. “Cyrus probably doesn’t want to see him, anyways.”

“Nah, man, invite him!” Cyrus said, and he looked so _earnest_ that it made another spike of panic rush under Cam’s skin. “If you think he’s cool now, Cam, I wanna see him. Really.”

“No, really, it’s—”

“Besides,” Cyrus said, winking at Cam before he turned back around the face the road. “I’ll never say no to more bodies in the house when we’re doing a show.”

Cam pulled his phone out of his pocket, gripping it uncertainly. He didn’t want to deal with Grayson yet. He didn’t want to deal with Grayson _ever_ , really. Maybe everything would be easier if he just pretended he’d never run into Grayson that night at the bar. Maybe he could move in with the DoD. Maybe he could—

“Do it, do it!” Skeeter started chanting, and then Rud and Cyrus joined in, and Goob laughed, and finally Cam rolled his eyes and huffed, “Uhn-kay! Fine, _eses_ , I’ll text him. I don’t know if he’ll even want to come, though. He might be mad at me.”

As Cam spoke the words, staring down at his phone, realization washed over him. He felt… sorry. Sorry that he’d snuck out on Grayson, that he’d refused time and time again to just _talk_ to Grayson.

He didn’t want Grayson to be mad at him.

He didn’t know if that made him more or less eager to text Grayson now.

“It’ll be fine, bro,” Rud said, clapping Cam on the shoulder.

Cam made a non-committal sound and opened his text thread with Grayson. He skimmed his missed texts.

_Where’d you go?_

_Are you okay?_

_Are you mad at me?_

_When are you coming home?_

_Are you coming home?_

He tried to type up a response to Grayson’s questions, but everything he typed felt wrong. Finally, he settled on, _Going to a DoD show tonight. Wanna come?_

He hit send before he could change his mind.

He didn’t expect Grayson to answer. At least not right away. He leaned against the amp again, moved to put his phone in his pocket.

It vibrated before he could finish putting it away.

_Cam? Are you okay?_

He hesitated, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. He should say something. He owed Grayson that much, at least.

And then Grayson said, _Sure. I’ll come. Where? What time?_

Cam looked up. “Hey, Cy? What’s the name of the bar?”


	29. Chapter 29

By the time they got to the bar, the Advil had worked its magic, and Cam felt good enough to help the guys lug around the instruments and equipment to start setting up for the show. It felt nice, to focus on carrying heavy coils of cables and plugging in amps. To feel productive, even just a little bit.

The lone bartender who was working this early in the evening seemed to know the band well, and they laughed and chatted as they set up. Cam let himself ease into the conversation, and the knot of tension deep inside his stomach started to unspool.

The DoD wasn’t internationally famous, but they had enough of a cult following in the area that the bar was starting to fill with fans before the band was even finished their soundcheck. Cam saw dozens of DoD t-shirts, and one guy even came up to Cyrus with a CD and asked him to sign it.

A part of Cam was, undeniably, jealous. Jealous of their success, and more than that, jealous of how comfortable the DoD looked in their skin. They knew what they were doing, what they _wanted_ to do, and they were doing it.

But Cam was also happy for them. Really and truly. He let that feeling wash over him, and found himself grinning widely by the time Cyrus stepped up to the mic and shouted, “Is everybody ready for this?”

The crowd responded as one, a roar that started small and grew as the DoD launched into their first song, a classic they’d started performing back in high school.

“Good to know they haven’t abandoned their roots,” said a voice from behind Cam.

Cam’s heart leapt into his throat. He turned, and there was Grayson, wearing skinny jeans and a form-fitting black sweater that hugged the curves of his biceps like it was made for him. He looked just as good as he had that night at the club. Just as good as he always did.

“Hey,” Cam said, and his voice sounded too high. He coughed.

“Hey yourself,” Grayson said. He nodded at the stage. “Snuck out of the house at the crack of dawn to be a DoD groupie?”

“It wasn’t dawn, yo,” Cam protested. “It was like… nine.” This day had felt eternal, though.

Grayson nodded, his eyes still trained on the stage. Maybe it could be this easy. Grayson was a DoD fan, after all. Maybe they could just enjoy this concert together, and go home together, and not talk about… anything.

That would be the easy thing. But somehow, it didn’t feel easy. Walking a razor’s edge with Grayson could only be easy for so long.

So a part of Cam was genuinely relieved when Grayson said, still watching Cyrus instead of Cam, “Is this how it’s always going to be? We have a good time, you run away, and then I come pick you up once you’ve had a chance to cool down?”

Cam had no words. No excuses, no answers.

“Because I don’t think I can keep doing this, Cam.”

Grayson finally looked at him, and he looked… hurt. It made him look more like he had in high school. But the memory of Grayson in high school didn’t make Cam mad, though maybe it should have.

It just made Cam feel vulnerable. It made him feel young, too.

Really, high school hadn’t been that long ago.

“I’m sorry,” Cam said. His voice felt small, and Cam wondered if Grayson could even hear him over the sound of the DoD. “I’m sorry,” he said again, louder. “I really am. I wish I had an explanation for you, _ese_. I wish I had a reason for everything I’ve done. Since we met. Since before that, even.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. He looked down into Grayson’s eyes, his wide, young eyes. They were all still so young, weren’t they?

“I’m not okay, Grayson.” It was such a simple sentence, a small thing, something people had been saying to him for months, maybe longer. But it was the first time Cam had said it, plainly, and meant it.

He wasn’t okay.

“You don’t have to be okay, Cam,” Grayson said. He reached for Cam’s hand, and then hesitated. Cam reached out the rest of the way, met him halfway, twined their fingers together. “You just have to stop running away.” He squeezed Cam’s hand. “Please.”

Cam looked down at their intertwined hands. Grayson’s long, thin, beautiful fingers twisted around his own smallish hand. He wanted so badly to promise Grayson—anything. Everything. He wanted it so badly it hurt.

But he also didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep.

He met Grayson’s eyes again. “I don’t know if I can promise that, _ese_.”

Grayson eyes searched Cam’s face, almost desperate, trying to find whatever it was he wanted to see.

Then, gently, Grayson squeezed Cam’s hand, and then let go.

“That’s okay,” Grayson said, his voice almost swallowed up by the noise in the crowd. “I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do. I’ve done enough of that for a lifetime.”

Grayson gave Cam a wry smile, a sad smile, and Cam felt like he was drowning.

“I’m gonna go grab a drink,” Grayson said, looking away from Cam awkwardly. “Maybe we can… um… I’ll catch you in a bit?”

Cam watched Grayson weave his way through the crowd.

And then he was gone.


	30. Chapter 30

Cam felt numb. He watched the DoD finish their first song and move onto another, and another. He didn’t recognize some of these songs.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry.

He wanted to—

“Cam!”

He spun around to see Lee, flanked by Biffy and Holger, waving at him through the crowd.

For just a second, Cam thought about darting into the crowd and just disappearing. There were enough DoD fans crowding the small bar that it wouldn’t be hard to hide, to find his way into a bathroom or out a back door before Lee could follow him.

But he didn’t. He scrubbed at his eyes furiously for a second, prayed that he didn’t look like he was on the verge of tears, and turned to give Lee his best grin.

“Hey, _ese_.”

“Didn’t know you were coming to the show!” Lee said. Biffy shouldered a few people aside, only somewhat violently, giving the three of them enough room to make their way over to Cam.

Cam expected Holger to throw himself at Cam, to wrap him in a bone-crushing Viking hug, but the tall blonde boy cowered ineffectively behind Lee when they got closer to Cam.

“Uh… You okay, Holg?”

“Is Cam still being the angry at his friends?” Holger asked, in a voice that counted as quiet for Holger, but still rang loud and clear in the noisy bar.

Cam winced. Was he?

“No, _ese_ ,” he said, and he meant it. “I wasn’t ever really angry with you guys. Mostly just with myself, uhn-kay?”

“Cam…” Lee said gently.

Cam saw Biffy’s eyes dart between the three of them awkwardly. “Okay,” Biffy said, giving Lee’s shoulder a quick squeeze before stepping aside. “While the three of you have some kind of sappy makeup session, I’m gonna go grab us some drinks. Usuals?”

Lee and Holger agreed absently, and it twisted something inside Cam’s gut to realize that these three went out together often enough that Biffy knew their usuals. He forced the feeling down.

When Biffy raised his eyebrows at Cam, he shook his head. Biffy shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, and then disappeared into the crowd. Cam forced himself not to look over at the bar, to check for Grayson’s distinctive silhouette.

“Cam, are you—” Lee started, but it seemed like Holger had reached his Cam-avoiding limit. Unable to contain himself any longer, he stepped out from behind Lee and launched himself as Cam, wrapping him up in the bone-crushing hug he’d been expecting.

“Oh, please don’t ever be mad at the Holgermeister again, Cam!” Holger sobbed loudly, lifting Cam several inches above the ground. “Holger would _die._ ”

“Hey, man, no one’s dying,” Cam said, patting Holger’s hair. Lee caught Cam’s eye, and Cam hated how Lee looked like, maybe, he didn’t quite believe him.

“Could you put me down, _ese_? I can’t breathe around—oof.” Holger put him down, only for Lee to throw his arms around both of them, hugging almost as tight as Holger.

“We were worried about you, man,” Lee said, his voice right near Cam’s ear. “For real. No one’s heard from you in weeks, not since Jenny saw you at the bar last month.”

It hadn’t occurred to Cam how long he’d been pointedly ignoring all of his friends’ calls and texts. He hadn’t been very social in years, but the past month had been complete radio silence.

And they’d all cared. All of them. They really had.

“I’m sorry,” Cam said, hugging back. “I’m fine.” He paused. Thought about what he’d said to Grayson, minutes before. He wasn’t fine. But… “I will be fine. I’m trying.”

Lee and Holger pulled away slightly, their hands still grasping his shoulders.

“Are you still living with Grayson?” Lee asked, his eyes searching Cam’s face, brows furrowed.

Cam wracked his brain, tried to remember if he’d ever told Lee he was living with Grayson. He didn’t think so, but everything had become such a jumbled mess in the past few months that he’d believe almost anything at this point.

Lee seemed to notice his confusion. “Jenny told us,” Lee said. “Unlike Brandy, she didn’t feel like she needed to keep your weird double life a secret from us.”

“Why is Cam never telling his best friends until the old man times anything?” Holger whined, his grip on Cam’s shoulder tightening slightly as his eyes misted with tears.

“For real, man. Feels kinda shitty to be the last people to learn anything about your life,” Lee said.

Cam’s stomach twisted. He’d told Brandy, and Jenny, and Cyrus, and even his little sister about Grayson. Why hadn’t he told Holger and Lee? Why hadn’t he gone to them first, like he would have a few years ago?

“I didn’t want to disappoint you guys,” Cam said, and he knew as he said it that it was true. Holger and Lee _were_ his best friends, and he didn’t want to change in their eyes.

He wanted to be the same person he’d been in high school, or as close to it as he could get. School pres, cool and confident. He wanted to be their best friend as much as they were his, and he didn’t know how to be that anymore.

“Disappoint us?” Lee asked, confused. “Because you’re living with Grayson?”

“Because of _everything_ ,” Cam said.

A dam somewhere deep in his chest had started to trickle over when he’d talked to Grayson earlier, and now it felt like it was about to burst.

“Because I lost my job again. Because my mom kicked me out, yo. Because I might be gay or… or bi, or whatever… not that you guys would be upset about that, but because I didn’t tell you, didn’t come to you guys first. Because I’m with _Grayson_ , of all people. Because I might _not_ be with him anymore, and it’s not even his fault, it’s mine, uhn-kay?”

“Cam is dating Grayson? Grayson from school?” Holger asked, eyes wide.

Cam groaned. “ _Yes_ , Grayson from school, _ese_. The one and only Grayson any of us know, apparently.”

“Jenny didn’t tell us you were _dating_ him,” Lee said, his eyes almost as wide as Holger’s. “She just said you were living with him, and then she winked, and you said you slept with him that one time, but—”

Cam groaned and clapped his hands over his ears. “Forget it, _ese_. It doesn’t matter. We weren’t even really _dating_ , yo, and we definitely aren’t now.”

Lee glanced at Holger, who shrugged helplessly, and Cam realized he probably wasn’t making very much sense.

“Do you need to… talk about it?” Lee asked. “About… things? We can go if it’s too loud in here. I’m sure Cyrus won’t mind if we miss one show.”

“Did I just hear you suggest _leaving_ a DoD show?” Biffy asked, appearing out of the crowd with three drinks clutched precariously in two hands. “I don’t leave DoD shows unless I’m unconscious or _dead_.”

He handed Lee and Holger their drinks, glowering as if to prove his point.

“You can stay,” Lee said, rolling his eyes affectionately at Biffy. “Cam was _just_ about to tell us more about Grayson, though, so—”

“It’s okay,” Cam said. “We can stay. I want to.”

And he did. The DoD was gearing up to play their next song, and Lee and Holger were still standing close enough that he could feel the warmth of them pressed against his sides, and he just wanted to _be_ , here, now.

“You sure?” Lee asked, hesitating.

“Yeah, _ese._ I’m sure.”

Lee gave him one more hesitant look, then smiled. “Okay. Well, we should go find Brandy, then. And Tina and Jenny should be here, soon, too.”

Cam winced at the realization that he was going to have to face _everyone_ , and they’d probably all ask him about Grayson, and—

The song that the DoD had started playing had sounded distantly familiar, but as soon as Cyrus started singing, realization hit Cam like a splash of cold water.

_“Have these words, they can’t replace the life you—_

_Can’t ignore me, you must’ve broken down…”_

That day at the DoD’s apartment came back to Cam in a flash, that little song just titled _cam_ that Skeeter had played for him.

This was the song that Cyrus had written for Cam. Cyrus had said that they would play it tonight, but suddenly, hearing the lyrics echoing through the bar, Cam felt strangely exposed. Did they always play this song at shows? Or was Cyrus playing this one _for_ Cam, because Cam was here tonight?

Cam glanced over at Biffy, who was staring up at the stage with unfiltered excitement.

“This is a new song!” he said. “See, Lee? This is why we don’t leave DoD shows. We’re getting a _live premiere_.”

Lee laughed and hooked his arm around Biffy’s. “Yeah, okay, buddy. You can listen to this _live premiere_ while we look for Brandy.”

Cam followed them as they made their way to some tables at the back of the bar. So Cyrus _was_ playing this song for him, specifically.

Something like panic welled up inside of Cam. What did this _mean_? Was Cyrus trying to tell him something? Had Cam’s drunken attempt to get into Cryus’s pants meant more to Cyrus than it had seemed? Did Cam _want_ it to mean more?

Cam glanced up at the stage. There was Cyrus, top-hatted, sweaty, and _living_ in this moment in a way that should have made Cam hot with jealousy. But that feeling from earlier, that feeling of just being _happy_ for Cyrus and the DoD, washed over him again. It cooled his panicked thoughts.

“ _Tried to be that someone_

_For you. I just live in this moment, so_

_Won’t you take it too far—I know…_ ”

Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe Cyrus was just playing a song for a friend. Because they were friends. They were.

“Cam!”

Cam turned just in time to see Brandy throw her arms around his neck and pull him into a tight hug.

“Hey, Brandy,” he said into her hair.

She pulled away from him enough to look him in the eye. “How are you doing, Camillio?” she asked. “How are you _actually_ doing? No bullshit.”

“I’ve been better,” he said, which was true. He put his arms around her and squeezed her back. “But I’ve been worse, too.” Which was also true.

“Oh, Cam.” She squeezed him again briefly. “Now…” She grabbed his wrist and dragged him over to the table where Biffy, Lee and Holger had already sat down while Cam was staring up at Cyrus. “Tell me _everything_ about Grayson.”

Cam opened his mouth to protest. He didn’t want to talk about Grayson. Not now. Not with the conversation they’d just had, not when Grayson was probably still somewhere in this bar, so close that Cam could almost feel him but too far to reach.

“Please, Cam?” Lee said, and he looked so sincere that the last of that dam inside of Cam crumbled.

“Uhn-kay,” Cam said. “I guess it started that night we went to Holger and Brandy’s show…”


	31. Chapter 31

Later, after the DoD had finished their set and another band had taken over to play the second half of the night, Cyrus came loping over to their table, the rest of the DoD on his heels.

“You guys all made it!” he said, making his way around to table to dish out fist bumps and hugs.

Tina and Jenny had shown up while Cam was talking about Grayson, and he’d had to backtrack to give them the full story, but somehow, he hadn’t really minded. Once he’d started talking, it had been easy to continue.

“So is Grayson grabbing drinks for everyone?” Cyrus asked, pulling a chair over from a nearby table so he could squeeze in between Cam and Brandy.

“What?” Cam said, an unexpected flash of cold panic washing over him.

“Saw him over by the bar,” Cyrus said. He seemed to notice Cam’s panic, and the raised eyebrows he was getting from everyone around the table who’d just finished listening to Cam’s breakup story. “Didn’t bother fighting through the crowd to say hi to him because I figured he’d be joining us. Is he not?”

“He’s not,” Cam said, shifting in his chair.

“What?” Cyrus said, throwing his arms in the air. “You invited him here just to avoid him?”

“Cyrus—” Brandy started, reaching for him.

“We broke up, _ese_ ,” Cam interrupted. “We talked, and we broke up, yo. If we were ever really dating.”

Cyrus squinted at him. “Why?”

“Cy, don’t grill him,” Lee said, leaning across the table. “Let the guy breathe.”

Cam wanted to take the reprieve Lee was offering him, wanted to shrink down, to not have to explain himself to Cyrus. But at the same time he wanted Cyrus to understand— _needed_ Cyrus to understand, more than any of them.

“I can’t be what he needs, uhn-kay?” Cam said, his eyes on Cyrus, only on Cyrus. “What he deserves.”

It felt like Cam was laying himself bare, right in front of all of his friends, but wasn’t that what he’d been doing all night?

“Bullshit,” Cyrus said, with enough force that it actually surprised Cam.

Cyrus was usually so chill, but now he was looking at Cam with an intensity that could only come from a post-show high.

“If you don’t want to be with him, that’s your call,” Cyrus said. “Hell, I wouldn’t blame you. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of the guy after what happened in high school. But if you broke up with him because you don’t think you’re good enough for him, Cam, then you’re gonna go over there and _take it back_ , or I’m gonna march you over there myself.”

It felt like everyone at their table was holding their breath, watching Cam and Cyrus, who’d leaned so far forward that their foreheads were almost touching. The band that was playing now was just as loud as the DoD, filling up the bar with their sound, but their little table suddenly seemed to exist in a bubble of silence.

It wasn’t that Cam thought he wasn’t good enough for Grayson, was it? And it wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with Grayson. He did want to be with Grayson. It was just that he didn’t know how to do it right.

The realization hit Cam like a punch to the gut.

He wanted to be with Grayson. He _wanted_ it. He wanted to live in Grayson’s apartment and watch stupid movies with him and climb into bed with Grayson and not worry about what it meant, not worry about getting in too deep.

Cam had spent so long with a deep, empty hole in the center of his being where wanting should have been that it had taken him this long to realize that Grayson had come along and filled that hole to bursting. And now the want was overflowing, clawing up out of Cam’s throat like panic, but like something else too.

Like excitement. Like purpose.

Cam stood up, and Cyrus’s serious face split into a grin.

“Hell yeah, dude,” Cyrus said. “Go get your man.”

“Cam, are you sure?” Lee said, standing up and reaching for Cam. “You don’t have to—”

“Lee Ping, shush,” Brandy said, reaching over the table to slap at his hand. “Let him do this.”

“I’m just saying—”

Their silent table erupted into conversation, but Cam wasn’t really listening. He glanced at Cyrus one more time, who have him a grin and nod, and it felt like a kind of blessing.

Cam nodded back, and then he was weaving his way through the crowd, towards the bar.

People were dancing and jumping and singing along to the band, and he had to elbow his way through. A few people snapped at Cam or shoved him aside, but he didn’t care.

The music was thumping through his veins, and Grayson was there, sitting at the counter a few feet away, and Cam was almost out of breath. He wasn’t sure if it was from fighting his way through the crowd or from the _wanting_ that was pressing up against his lungs.

“I do want it,” Cam said, almost shouted over the music, and the bartender raised his eyebrows at Cam as Grayson turned to him.

“What?” Grayson said. “Cam?” He was clutching a drink in one hand, white-knuckled.

“I want it. You. This. Everything we’ve been doing. I was scared, I guess. And confused, uhn-kay? And… and… I still am, _ese_ , but I do want. To live with you. To be with you.” He took a deep breath. “I want to try not to run away anymore. From you. From anyone.”

Grayson just stared, for a long moment, and Cam laughed awkwardly.

“That was… uh… Probably too much, huh?” Cam said. “What is this, yo, a romcom? I didn’t… I just, wanted you to know that I’ve wanted all of this, too, _ese_ , even though I’ve probably been sending you some pretty mixed signals. I think I was sending myself mixed signals, too, but—”

“Cam.”

One word from Grayson’s lips, just his name, and Cam went still and silent. He could hear his heart beating in his chest even with the band still screaming in the background. The bartender and some of his customers were watching Cam and Grayson, but he didn’t care.

He didn’t _care_ , but in a way that made him feel empowered instead of listless.

“Cam,” Grayson said again, and now he was grinning, a crooked smile that made Cam’s heart stutter. “This is the most romantic thing that has ever happened to me, and someone once rented a white horse covered in roses to ask me to a dance.”

“They… what?”

“I’ll tell you about it later,” Grayson said. He put his glass down on the bar, spilling a bit onto this counter in his haste to reach from Cam’s hands. He laughed as their fingers intertwined again. “Or I’ll tell you right now! I’ll tell you anything, do anything, whatever you want. Whatever you _want_.”

There was only one thing Cam wanted, _needed_ , from Grayson right now.

“Are we… cool? Do you, like, forgive me, _ese_?” he asked. “For leaving this morning, and every other time, and whatever else I’ve done?”

“Of course,” Grayson said. “Do you forgive me?”

Cam didn’t know what Grayson meant, exactly—forgive him for what had happened in high school? In the past month? Today, in the bar?

“Yes,” Cam said anyways, because it was true.

And then he leaned down, his hands still intertwined with Grayson’s, and kissed him, because he _wanted_ to, and Grayson wanted it, too.

The kiss was long, and hard, and when he pulled away from Grayson’s mouth, he felt breathless.

“Should we… do you want to go home?” Grayson asked, his eyes shining behind his glasses.

“ _Yes_ ,” Cam breathed. Because he did, he really did. But then he paused, and shook his head. “Yes, but first… Lee and Biffy and Cyrus and everyone are here. They want to meet you, yo. Or meet you again? You know them already. I mean, they want to see you.”

Grayson laughed, but Cam saw the look that crossed Grayson’s face. He looked… vulnerable. Worried.

“It’s uhn-kay,” Cam said, squeezing Grayson’s hands. “I told them you’re cool now.”

“Am I? Cool now?”

“Yeah,” Cam said. “You are. None of us are the same people we were in high school. Not even close.”

Grayson smiled. “Alright,” he said, pulling his hands away from Cam’s gently. “Let’s go.”


	32. Chapter 32

Cam woke up on Christmas Eve with Grayson’s arm thrown loosely over his waist, his breaths soft and sleepy in Cam’s ear.

Cam yawned and nestled deeper into the blankets, reveled in the warmth that radiated from Grayson’s front pressed to his back, in the soft sounds of the world waking up outside the apartment.

They’d slept together the night before, and the night before that, and almost every night since the night at the bar when Cam had told Grayson that he _did_ want this, all of this. And not just shared Grayson’s bed—they’d had sex, done the do, whatever it was Cyrus had called it.

And Cam hadn’t run away, hadn’t even felt the urge to. He still felt conflicted about so many things—about getting a job, about talking to his mom again, about where his life was even headed—but this, at least, didn’t feel confusing anymore.

It just made Cam feel giddy, and young, and utterly, utterly lovestruck.

He rolled over, so he was facing Grayson instead of being spooned by him. Grayson looked so soft when he was asleep. Peaceful, vulnerable. Beautiful.

Cam leaned forward and gently pressed a kiss to Grayson’s forehead, that feeling that was just _good_ bubbling up inside him.

Grayson blinked his eyes open, and yawned slightly when Cam pulled away from the kiss.

“Sorry, _ese_ ,” Cam said. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

Grayson smiled, sleepy, looking slightly disoriented without his glasses on. “It’s okay,” he said. “Gotta get up and do all that Christmas stuff, right?”

Cam groaned and buried his face in the pillow beside Grayson’s. “Nooo,” he moaned. “Can’t we just stay in bed?”

“Cam Martinez, do you hate Christmas? I can’t believe I’m dating someone who hates Christmas.”

Cam’s heart leapt up into his throat at that word. _Dating._ It was silly, to be so excited to hear Grayson say that word, when they’d essentially been dating for months now.

But it _was_ exciting, and Cam tried to hold onto that excitement as he rolled onto his back and let out a long breath.

“I don’t hate Christmas,” he said to the ceiling. “I just… I promised Angelina that I’d see her and my mom before Christmas, but I still haven’t. I have to call them today, I know I do, but…”

He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying not to let that overwhelming feeling wash over him—that feeling that he’d made so many mistakes, done so many things wrong, that he didn’t even know where to start to fix them all.

“What about my other friends?” he said. “Lee and Holger and everyone. I know they’re probably spending Christmas with their families, but I should call them, yo, shouldn’t I? And what about you? _Mierda_ , I don’t even have a Christmas present for you! Or for anyone else. What have I been doing all month, _ese_?”

“Cam.” Grayson reached over and pulled Cam’s hands away from his face gently, then touched Cam’s cheek, pushing gently until Cam turned his head and met Grayson’s eyes. “It’s okay.”

Cam tried to swallow down that overwhelming feeling, focused on the soft grey-blue of Grayson’s eyes.

“Is it?” Cam asked. “Please tell me you didn’t get me some crazy Christmas present, dude.” He didn’t think he could handle that, not after everything Grayson had already given him.

To Cam’s surprise, Grayson’s face reddened. “No,” he said quickly. “Not really. Just… don’t get mad, Cam, but I thought… that online class I paid for? I thought that could be your Christmas present. Because I never wanted you to think it was… charity, or pity, or something. It was just a gift.”

Somehow, those words eased a tightness in Cam’s chest that he’d forgotten was even there. He smiled, and he saw something like relief wash over Grayson’s face.

“Yeah, _ese_ , that’s cool,” he said. “Thank you. Really. And I’m sorry I got so pissed about that, I just… I need to start pulling my weight around here. I know I do. I’ll get a job in January, yo, I promise. I’ll start paying rent and groceries and—”

“Cam, you don’t have to,” Grayson said, touching Cam’s arm gently. “Not until you’re ready. Not ever, if you don’t want to.”

Cam shook his head, still pressed against the pillow. “I do need to,” he said. “For me.”

Grayson stared at him for a long moment, seemed on the verge of arguing… Then he relented, nodded against his own pillow. “Okay,” he said. “I get it.”

He smiled ruefully, then rolled onto his back, too, and ran a hand through his messy, ungelled hair.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been making you feel like you aren’t… self-sufficient or something, Cam,” he said. “Maybe there’s a part of me that wanted to feel like I could, I don’t know, _provide_ for you. Prove my parents wrong, or something.”

Cam’s eyes widened. “Oh, _mierda_ , your parents! Are you going to be spending Christmas with them?” How had Cam not thought of that? He’d been so wrapped up in this—in him and Grayson, just the two of them, finally together in a way that felt _right_ —that it hadn’t even occurred to him that Grayson probably had somewhere to be this Christmas.

Grayson shook his head, though. “No. They don’t live in Toronto anymore. They moved out west a few years ago and they… weren’t happy that I didn’t go with them.”

“How come you never talk about them?” Cam asked carefully. He felt suddenly selfish, and foolish, for not having asked Grayson about this earlier. There was still so much he really didn’t know about Grayson, wasn’t there?

Grayson shrugged. “They’re not bad people, I guess. We just had… differences of opinion.”

Cam snorted. “Know what you mean, _ese_.”

But even with all their differences of opinion, Cam realized that he _missed_ his mom. The idea of having Christmas without her, of having a future without her in it, made his chest ache with a surprising kind of longing, like something would be missing without his family.

“What kind of differences of opinion?” he asked.

Grayson looked like he might not answer. Cam could see him thinking, the way his eyes twitched up to the ceiling. He could almost hear the careful word choices that would come out of his mouth, the Grayson who spoke like a cautious politician instead of like a person.

And then his shoulders sagged, just a tiny bit, and he said, “They didn’t want me to live alone, for one.”

“Like, they wanted you to have a roommate, or…” Except Cam kind of already knew that wasn’t what Grayson meant.

“Like they wanted me to stay with them forever. Like they needed to make sure someone was taking _care_ of me forever.”

Cam rolled onto his stomach, propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at Grayson. Grayson with his strong arms and his strong ideas and his seemingly limitless internet fortune, Grayson who’d been doing nothing but taking care of him for months now.

“Well, you proved them wrong, didn’t you,” Cam said.

Grayson laughed slightly as he met Cam’s eyes. “Yeah, I did,” he said, and his words were self-assured, but he looked a little thankful. “I knew I could. So I said fuck that, and I left. Or I stayed, I guess, when they moved. They’re still trying to get me to come live with them. Or they were the last time I talked to them. It’s been a while.”

Cam let his chin drop onto Grayson’s chest and he let out a huff of breath.

“Man, that sucks,” he said, and it did suck. It sucked, but more than that, it was eye-opening—that Grayson had his own life, his own problems, but that Cam was part of that life now, that he could try to be for Grayson what Grayson was for him.

“Yeah. I don’t know. They try. They think they’re trying, anyways.” He ran a hand through Cam’s long curls. Cam still hadn’t gotten a haircut, and his mane reached past his shoulder blades now. Grayson’s fingers snagged on a knot and he began methodically brushing through the knots with his hands as he spoke. “They weren’t big on the whole gay thing, either.”

“That’s shitty, yo,” Cam said, and he realized he had no idea how his mom would react to the gay thing, either. She’d been unclear with the whole Biffy and Lee thing.

To be fair, Biffy and Lee weren’t the most obvious couple, with Biffy’s insecurities and distaste for PDA combined with Lee’s general obliviousness. Cam couldn’t be sure if the dirty looks his mom shot their way whenever they came over (and it had been a long time since they had) were because she’d figured out their sinful ways and disapproved, or just because she thought they were trouble-making bad influences.

Cam figured his mom would at least think Grayson was a good influence, with his respectable hair and air of educated intelligence.

“I think they would have been more upset about the gay thing if they thought I’d ever actually get laid,” Grayson added.

“What?”

“I didn’t date anyone in high school because I was a nerd and a kid and also kind of an asshole, but… I’ve made up for it since. I’ve made up for all of it. I have an apartment and money and…” Grayson’s hands stilled in Cam’s hair. He paused for half a breath. “A boyfriend.”

It was half statement and half question. Cam felt a wave of something tingly wash over him, from his toes to his skull, but it wasn’t bad. He thought for half a second about what this meant, and what he was committing to, and then realized that it was just a word, that he’d already committed to what it meant months ago, really.

“Yeah,” Cam said. “A _fantastico_ boyfriend.”

He smiled, closed his eyes, and relaxed into the feeling of Grayson’s fingers running through his hair.

Later, he would call Angelina. He’d make plans to see her on Christmas, and his mom, too. Maybe Grayson would come with him. Maybe Marco would be there. Maybe Cam’s mom would try to talk him into working with Marco again. Maybe Cam would, or maybe he’d call up Cyrus, ask him if the DoD needed help setting up their next show.

Maybe Cam would save up enough to finish doing his History degree online. Maybe he’d even taken some courses on campus, hang out with Holger and Lee in the cafeteria between classes.

Maybe none of those things would happen. But for the first time in a long time, Cam felt like _something_ would happen, like there was something ahead of him, even if he didn’t know what it was.

Cam was only twenty years old, after all, and he was going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the final chapter! After working on this fic off and on since 2015 it feels unreal that it's finally finished... I hope you enjoyed the ride!


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